My Foolish Heart by Susan Warren is the fourth book in her Christian contemporary Deep Haven series, but can be read as a standalone. We follow Issy, the anonymous Miss Foolish Heart, host of a radio talk show on love and, in reality, a young woman struggling with PTSD and agoraphobia resulting from a car crash that killed her mother and permanently injured her father. When Caleb, a veteran who lost his leg in Iraq, moves in next door and seeks to get his dream job coaching the high school football team (all without people finding out about his injury and avoiding their pity), their lives will collide and neither will be the same again.
I gave this book 2.5 out of 5 stars. It was a “meh” read for me. I had such high expectations for the book and the premise sounded cute and sweet. There were some moments throughout the story that were what I was hoping for and it had a satisfying ending, but there was too much that diminished my enjoyment for me to feel it was worth it.
The secondary romance in the book I really didn’t like. Not only did I dislike the characters themselves, but their plot line. There was just so much wrong there and I don’t want to spoil anything, but it turned me off and pulled me out of the story every time we switched to them.
As for the faith content, it didn’t feel realistic. None of the characters accurately reflected a person walking in faith and all that entails. Some of them claimed to be Christians, but everything they thought and did was so opposite of what we believe. Yes, Christians aren’t perfect and make mistakes, but that is not what was shown here. There were no real differences made in this book between the thoughts and behaviors of these “believing” characters and the non-believers (at least for most of the book). It just felt so fake and like a very bad representation of the Christian life.
My next point is just a pet pieve of mine, so I know it really isn’t so big a deal and may not be a problem for many people. That being said, I really dislike it when people use paraphrases to quote and teach scripture. This bugs me to no end in all Christian literature (fiction and especially non-fiction). It’s not that I want everyone to use one specific translation either, I just want them to use a translation.
Overall, there was great potential with this story and the writing style and characterization are pretty strong, but it just didn’t come close to living up to that.
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