[ARC Review] This Side of Salvation

Thursday, April 03, 2014


Title: This Side of Salvation
Author: Jeri Smith-Ready
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA Contemporary
Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Release Date: April 1st 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Source: ARC received by publisher in exchange for an honest review

Purchase
Amazon | Indigo | TBD | Goodreads





Everyone mourns differently. When his older brother was killed, David got angry. As in, fist-meets-someone-else’s-face furious. But his parents? They got religious. David’s still figuring out his relationship with a higher power, but there’s one thing he does know for sure: The closer he gets to new-girl Bailey, the better, brighter, happier, more he feels.

Then his parents start cutting all their worldly ties in to prepare for the Rush, the divine moment when the faithful will be whisked off to Heaven…and they want David to do the same. David’s torn. There’s a big difference between living in the moment and giving up his best friend, varsity baseball, and Bailey—especially Bailey—in hope of salvation.

But when he comes home late from prom, and late for the Rush, to find that his parents have vanished, David is in more trouble than he ever could have imagined...



I want to preface this review by saying that I am in no way religious and really despise when someone pushes their religion onto me. I do not question what other believe, but I do not want to be persuaded into believing something I do not. And I will admit that because of that, I did not love this book as much as I wanted to.

This book starts off with a brother and sister and their parents and their belief in the Rush, aka The Rapture. I have always been fascinated with the subject of the rapture and why so many people believe it will happen, and i will say that I liked reading about it and how it affected the family. David is our narrator, and he is as questioning about the rapture as I am, and i found that to be very refreshing. I always love characters that questions the beliefs of their parents and/or family because it shows that they are their own person and want to be separated from them and be their own person.

When David and his sister come home from a party on the night The Rapture is supposed to happen, they find their parents are gone, leaving nothing but their nightgowns on the bed. As if they had disappeared into thin air. This was the part of the book that I liked the most. The mystery. I like, David wanted to know what happened to his parents and if they did indeed disappear into thin air, or something completely different. As for the ending, I liked that it was realistic and made sense to me because I think that if it wasn't I would have not liked this book at all.

The writing itself was beautiful, but what I did not like was the switching between past and present tense. I found this while i was reading I would forget what tense I was in and become confused. I needed to go back and see if what I was reading was before or after the rapture happened.

I also disliked the amount of religious text that was throughout the book, but it made sense for the story. For me it was a little much and really made no sense to me at times because I did not understand what the passages really meant. I mean I got a sense of what they were supposed to mean but I think if i had a little more knowledge then I might have had a better time with them.

Overall this book had great aspects to it that I liked, like the mystery and the questioning o religion and if you should really go along with that your parents believe even if you don't believe. But there were too many aspects that I did not like, and therefore It was the read I was expecting.

You Might Also Like

1 comments

  1. I'm disappointed that this book isn't as spectacular as I initially thought it would be. Scripture verses only work if they're relative to the chapters, I supposed.

    Thanks for the honest review.

    ReplyDelete