2 out of 4 stars
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In her book, Love Lifted Me, B.L.Harden exposes the ramifications of taking up an offense and letting it fester. Written in short chapters, she covers the idea of how harboring unforgiveness can lead to all types of trouble.
This book is written in the first person with the character Ann Mobley playing narrator. Her lifelong best friend, Hattie, a regular church attendee is suddenly absent from her spot in her normal pew. Hattie confides to Ann that a situation has arisen to shake her confidence and faith as a believer. While Ann admonishes her to clear this up, Hattie stubbornly refuses to see the light.
Because the book is so short with seventy-four pages written in large print, a reader could easily finish this story from cover to cover in one session. However, the punctuation, sentence structure, and grammar errors are jarring making for a bumpy and uncomfortable reading experience. For example, commas are left out when dialogue is taking place as seen here in this sentence: "...all Hattie said was "'I am so happy for you and so proud of the progress you have made.'" A comma should be inserted after the word 'was' to set apart the conversation from the rest of the text. While this may seem minor, this occurred throughout the entire book making it difficult at times to understand when a character was about to speak. In addition to this, dialogue between characters was sometimes written in the format of a play with the character's name listed and his or her words following. Then, in other parts of the book, the characters communicated with quotation marks placed around their words. This makes for a rather haphazard writing style and one way should be chosen and adhered to throughout the piece.
Besides a lack of continuity in how the dialogue was presented, there were many spelling mistakes. The one that struck me the most was in this sentence: "Slowly rising to her feet moving towards the center aisle, Hattie started belching out Love Lifted Me." The word 'belching', I am assuming, should be 'belting' written in a slang term to indicate singing at the top of her lungs. Belching is an entirely different activity which probably would be frowned upon in a church setting. The author makes this mistake twice. This blunder is significant because the title of the book is based on this, and it occurs at the pinnacle of the story. With this mistake so glaring, it takes away from the emotional impact that the story should produce at that moment.
This small book does have the potential to be of great use. The storyline, the characters and the use of slang was entertaining. I enjoyed the theme of the story in that it revolved around the fact that when we don't resolve issues involving offense, we become chained to it so much so that our reality and perception can become skewed. All we see is the frustration and this leaves no room for clear-headed thinking. Anger and love cannot co-exist, so in Hattie's case, she was allowing her feelings of irritation to cloud her ability to view a situation with clarity. Even though the author wrote this with the intention of churchgoers to read this and shape up, I think humanity itself could learn a lesson. Not only does the author put out a call about the power of forgiveness, she also encourages people to be aware of their fellow man and come to the aid of another when something seems amiss.
I think the book would be best suited for a church discussion group as the author has included questions at the end for pondering the various topics she wrote about. The context does have a Pentecostal flair, so for those who don't like that, this wouldn't be on their 'want to read' list.
I kept envisioning this as a wonderful idea for a church to convert into a play and present it to a congregation. With the narrator already in place throughout the entire piece, the author's message could extend further to reach the masses. Many people don't like to read, but they will sit and watch the action of a story on a stage.
Due to the lack of attention given to proper punctuation, grammar and formatting, I am awarding this book a 2 out of 4 stars. In its current state of disorganization, it is difficult to read, but if the author would take the necessary steps in having it professionally edited along with a good proofreading, its value would increase tremendously. Also, the genre this book was listed under was 'non-fiction' which would indicate it was a true story. I could not decipher while I was reading whether this was the case or not.
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Love Lifted Me
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