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It's on the longer side of a listen at 11 hours and 37 minutes, easy to follow along at 2x. Barrie Kreinik was a perfect narrator. He wants us to make disciples by teaching them the commands of Jesus and teaching them to observe those commands. Jesus wants those who are willing to become more like Him! He doesn’t just want us to know His ways, He wants us to observe His ways.
Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Therese Anne Fowler for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 6.7!** I designed It All Comes Down to This to be a big-hearted tale that utilizes dramatic irony, one of my favorite story forms. Everyone’s got a secret, and the reader is in on all of it while the characters are not. The result, I hope, is a smart, entertaining, compelling, even endearing story that in its slightly subversive way also takes on issues of class and feminism and identity. It’s a story about fate and coincidence and choice, about how we can remake ourselves in the face of adversity. It’s about Art. And family. And love.How differently the Geller sisters’ lives would have turned out had C. J. Reynolds not been released from prison that February. Or suppose he’d been released but had not decided to restart his life on Mount Desert Island, Maine, where Marti Geller’s old waterfront house might or might not be coming up for sale. Suppose that instead of getting a flight from Columbia, South Carolina, to Bangor, C.J. had instead returned to his hometown of Aiken to try to make amends. Let’s not hang our heads about the last year, let’s look forward to the future as Jesus is with us!
In the meantime, Arlo looks up to C.J. as a father figure, who lost his parents in a plane crash, and Ms. Callaghan is worried about his future since she is getting up in age and bad health. Arlo and CJ develop a strong bond—love these two together with the grandmother. CJ also has a grown daughter who lives in Portland. Today is the end of the book. Today, we learn what Jesus left us with before He left the earth to be with the Father in heaven. Church, it all comes down to this. Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advance copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. I listened to the audiobook for IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS and found the narration and the performance entertaining. This is an important coming of age novel. Sophie has a lot to come to terms with: who she is and wants to be, her changing family circumstances, her sister leaving home, and what it means to her be a person of colour. At the same time, it's sure to educate and open the eyes of readers as well.
It's also a story about storytelling: the stories we tell one another, the stories we tell ourselves, and the literal act of writing stories—with a slightly meta twist that I’ll leave for you to discover. Dr. Tony Evans says this concerning the command to make disciples: “The effectiveness of a church is therefore evaluated—not in the number of its members—but by its disciple-making. It’s the absence of discipleship that keeps a church impotent and ineffective, because by not taking up Christ’s mission of discipleship, its people cannot draw on Christ’s authority.” Well said, Dr. Evans. Church, let us not be impotent and ineffective! Let us develop disciples!
Karen English has created a brilliant cast of complex characters. They are fully realized, nuanced people, flaws and all. She manages to highlight their humanity, no matter what happens. I appreciate that Jennifer and her family try hard to not see skin color as an issue, but that we also understand how impossible this is. It's only in the past few years that I have come to see my own ignorance in claiming to not see this difference.FOR FANS OF: Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, Dortohea Benton Frank, and Jennifer Weiner's That Summer. Jesus didn’t want His followers to stay in Galilee, although the go did include Galilee. Jesus doesn’t want us to stay in Bartow or Polk County, although the go does include Bartow and Polk County. It All Comes Down to This is a really great read. Despite the fact that there's not much plot action happening, I've always enjoyed coming-of-age stories and this one is really well done. Claire, the middle child, is recently divorced from her husband, Chad. Although she is an accomplished and highly regarded pediatric cardiologist --- every parent’s dream! --- she thinks that her boring life can’t hold a candle to those of her sisters’. Her achievements, while hard-won and impressive, are not written up in magazines and journals like theirs are, and now that her marriage has unraveled, she doesn’t even have a stable relationship to brag about. What she does have, though, is a terrible secret: for years she has been hopelessly, desperately in love with a completely unattainable man. It could have been tighter — but if you go with the flow — there are plenty of micro tales to enjoy.
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