The River

I am putting this out there right off: I am unsure how I feel about this book.  I've been sitting on this review a little, hoping I would figure it out, but no dice, so here's what you get. First off, since I picked this book up I had A Change is Gonna Come pretty much stuck in my head. So you're welcome for that. But really, the like "It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die" probably sums up where this book is at pretty well.

So here's the thing, I ditzed out when I first requested the book, and somehow I missed that this was a Christian novel. So I was being me, and updating my status on GoodReads to having it as 'read' and lo, I saw that it was a Christian > Inspirational book. So that kind of changed my framing of how I read the book because at the same time it makes more and less sense. So again, full disclaimer, I am not Christian, and didn't realize it WAS a Christian book. So basically my take away is this book can either be read as an adventure story, or an inspirational story. I read it as the former.

This book was... emotional. For lack of a better term. There were a lot of highs and lows and even though it was a bit of a slow read, I don't mean that in any negative way. The River makes a lot of promises that it will change your worldview and it fell a bit short on that to me. It was a good book, that draws you in and you don't want to stop reading it - even when you are a bit frustrated with the writing.  Basically, I think what I'm saying is I see why people loved the book, and I see why people were totally apathetic to it. This is probably  a horrible review, but it's actually not because I've recommended this book a few times, and I would recommend it again.

**I received a free copy of the e-book from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.