A FIERCE LOVE by Shauna Shanks

This is a memoir of one Christian wife's marriage and how she saved it. Shanks begins her book with Acknowledgments of those who have made her book possible. She spreads her content in 30 chapters and ends with Notes for the sources she used for the book. Each of her chapters begins with a Bible verse that fits with the chapter. In addition to being a wife and mother, Shanks is an entrepreneur. She started a health food cafe called Smallfolk.

This book was quite what I expected. Shanks get quite personal about her struggles with her husband. She doesn't gloss over his failings or her own. As her book (and the experience of too many of us shows), there is nothing like a bad or challenging marriage to surface our moral and spiritual failings. While the author is quite pro-marriage, she places no guilt trip on those who can't make their marriages work but choose divorce instead. She endorses the Sarah Young devotional, JESUS CALLING, with its questionable theology of relying on feeling and experiences at the expense of Scripture. Shanks claims an intimacy with God that consists, if we can believe her account, of personal communications. She also talks about experiences with dreams and professes having dreams and visions. To be sure, Scripture teaches about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of which the supernatural is integral. It is just that I grew up in a tradition that has edited out the supernatural, relegating it to the Bible days.

I recommend this book for any woman who wants to save her marriage. I recommend it even for girls and women who are engaged to be married. They can maybe get a stronger start in their marriages. But this book is one-sided, addressed only to wives. Someone needs to write a counterpart book for husbands in challenging marriages. It seems that more wives than husband have motivation plus resources, to fight for their marriages, than husbands do. This needs to change. Maybe the husband of this author can write his book one day? That would be awesome if he would.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through BOOKLOOKBLOGGERS, in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to give a favorable review of this book.