Book Review: The God Cookie, by Geoffrey Wood

This is part of the continuing series of random book reviews that'll be nothing like a New York Times book review. Gone is the ten thousand word analysis. Instead, here is a book review like you'd tell your friends.


The book:  Geoffrey Wood's The God Cookie

Review:

If this was God trying to direct me to read a book--angels humming, harps playing, booming voice, capital G God--then he needs to reevaluate our relationship or let someone else choose the material. The plot reads like the script to the worst Meg Ryan rom-com, circa 1995, and only half as plastic. The book's dialogue is rapid, banal, abundant, and as aimless as vanilla ice cream that's liquefied rapidly on the sidewalk in mid-July sun. It's sweet, viscous, and generally a lost cause.

I didn't realize this was a "faith fiction" book when I grabbed it off the library bookshelf looking for something light, a bit of whimsy perhaps. A random character follows a fortune cookie because he thinks God is directing him? Sure, I'll bite. Maybe it would be like bargain basement Monty Python.

Oh, no. Around the 300 page mark you're hit with a random chapter that reads like a South Carolina highway billboard asking you if you've really accepted God into your life. I was this close to pulling out my credit card to ask some televangelist if I could pay him just to take the book away from me.

Or, you know, bring it back to the library for me. If there is a God, maybe he was sending me a message he didn't want me reading such drivel to begin with.