Review of Ted Dekker's Green

I read Green because it was the recommended starting point in the Circle series and because I loved Three. My expectations were high when the author compared his work in this series to Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. I was expecting poignant, touching, thrilling, encouraging, even funny in places.

I was sorely disappointed. I found the characters annoying, and in Janae and Billy's case, cliche. Do we really need yet another vampire story? The dialog was high handed in many places, and the only characters I could care about were Chelise, Qurong and Patricia. There was such a focus on evil, gore, violence and sin that at the end of the book I felt hopeless and like I needed to take a shower. I feel something is wrong when a Christian author focuses more on these things than God's goodness and love.

I did think it was clever that Billy's name kept changing as he lost more and more of himself, and I was able to see many Biblical parallels, but these didn't redeem Green. I won't be reading the rest of the series.

What I'm doing with my life

1. I just made manicotti for the first time.

2. I signed up to be a part of the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers program. Very excited. They are sending me Ted Dekker's Green. Free books. :D

3. I joined a gym today.

4. I have a date tomorrow. We'll call him B.

5. I talked myself out of spending money today.

6. I went grocery shopping yesterday and plan to eat at home for the next week. (Unless someone else is paying, of course.)

7. I joined the choir at church.

8. I am looking for a cake decorating class.

9. I am looking into going back to school next semester for Organizations Communications.

10. I am in week 3 of my Beth Moore study. This week the big challenge is realizing that I am to treat myself as though I am holy since I am being sanctified. What do I watch? What do I listen to? How do I behave on dates? How do I speak? What do I read?

After I got over the shock and devasation of the break up, I realized that I am not stressed out nearly as much as I was. We were afraid I had an ulcer; I feel fine. I'm sleeping better, and I'm actually happier. Yes, there are still sometimes that I miss him, and there are times that I wish that we could be friends one day, but I still think that this would be unwise.

I like my life now. There is a lot of room for improvement of course, but I'm working on it. Next project: get in to the habit of doing laundry weekly and actually hang it up rather than just wear it out of the basket...