Concerning & Potentially Concerning Content

Important: While we always strive to include every detail we believe a Christian parent needs to know when considering a title for their children, the list below only contains the concerning content from the first portion of the book. See the next section for an explanation. The biggest concern… probably more than any other book we have reviewed, this author included a huge amount of confusing and sad “gender confusion” / “pronoun” type terminology. It started to feel like every page had at least one instance. A lady is referred to as “Mx. Amur” in place of “Mrs”, but then to multiply the confusion proceeds to use “she” and “her” to refer to her. Oh, and then we find out she “moved here with her wife”. It is painful for us to think about kids reading an immersive story and then coming across content like this. But there is more… the main character’s best friend shows up a lot and the author uses “they” to refer to them in the singular. This comes up over and over and besides being really sad it is also very confusing to read in a story format, especially for young readers who are still learning. We finally hit the “enough” point when the beloved sister is discovered to be running away… with a “girlfriend”... to get an apartment together in another city. So there’s that. We should also mention that this one has a very common “modern” feel to it where none of the characters are “likable”. Like many books, this one makes you really miss the flawed, but really great and enjoyable central characters of many older books (and fortunately in nearly all Christian titles still today). The main character ignores her teacher and lies. She is very negative. Early in the book a young 11-year-old girl falls to her death. We read the line, “I’ve never been scared of ghosts: I’d welcome them if they came”.