This week’s book review, thanks to a free copy from WaterBrook Press, is The Healing Choice and its associated Guidebook, written by Brenda Stoeker and Susan Allen. The authors are aiming here to help women heal from the betrayal of a husband’s unfaithfulness. Given the subject matter and the target audience, Becky volunteered to read the books and give us a review.

Becky says:

In what might well be a surprise to the reader, the first half of The Healing Choice centers not around an unfaithful husband, but around the death of author Brenda’s mother. She then goes on to draw parallels between her feelings of being betrayed by God and the feelings of being betrayed by her unfaithful husband. The second half of the book then tells the story of Susan’s healing after her husband’s unfaithfulness. Her experiences led her to start Avenue, a ministry facilitating support groups for men and women dealing with these situations. Both the stories are good and seem like they’d be helpful to someone in those situations, but it was something of a surprise to open up a book with a cover selling it as being about marital unfaithfulness and find the first half dealing, rather, with the death of a parent.

I opened up the guidebook expecting more of a study guide, something that might be used in a group study or personal study. However, the guidebook was less of the workbook-style book I was expecting and more of what I would’ve expected to be in the actual book. There is a lot of good content in the guidebook - it would work well as a stand-alone book, too. Expectations aside, these would seem to be good books for someone in the process of putting a marriage back together.

--

Thanks, Becky!