Indie Author Review: Ellen Senechal

Welcome to part two of the Indie Author Spotlight!

Today, I'll be reviewing Ellen Senechal's 30-day devotional, The Whispers God Gives.

Genre: Tween/Teen Devotional

Length: 79 pages 

Back-Cover Blurb: 

Hear God whisper as you read!

Have you ever found yourself questioning God’s will for your life? Are you battling things nobody else seems to relate to? What about bitterness after losing a friend? Perhaps you’ve scoured the Internet and came up dry because you couldn’t find anything that spoke directly to your teen or pre-teen heart.

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, this book is for you.

In The Whispers God Gives, teenaged author Ellen Senechal speaks from her heart and from God’s Word. She longs to share what she couldn’t find no matter how hard she looked – a clean, wholesome Christian devotional that’s short, sweet, and to the point. A book centered around strengthening your relationship with God your Savior, Counselor, and Friend in thirty days.

Let God’s whispers begin! 

My rating: 5 Stars

My review: Wow. This book was incredible. TBH, I rarely finish a devotional book (actually, I can't think of one that I've finished while reading it at a good pace). The devotions are great, but then they get old and they just become meaningless habit to read (I have a very short attention span, sometimes). This one? Not so. Not reading it pretty much every single day wasn't an option for me. Thirty days of real-life problems/solutions told from the perspective of a teenage girl? Yes, please! Some of the devotions spoke right to my heart at the time, while others are ones that I will probably find myself turning back to when I need them. Number two - "Whom Am I Striving to Please" - is probably my all-time favorite. Yes, I struggle with being too much of a people-pleaser. No, it hasn't gotten me anything but more pain. Now let's compare that to ancient Roman emperors and traditions. :D I think of that often, and I probably won't forget it for years and years to come. Number 17 - "I Want That Kind of Faith" - addresses a problem I have a lot. The day I read it, it helped to take away some of the guilt because I wasn't the kind of Christian that I thought I was "supposed" to be. Number 22 - "When You Want Control" - might rank as my second favorite. It spoke directly to my control-freak heart :)

Now, onto the more general review.

Pros:

1) Honest and raw. Ellen went full-steam-ahead, nothing-held-back when it came to being honest with me. I'm not sure I could have been that honest - without disguising it in a fiction story :D - and published it. But I'm so glad she did.

2) Different. This isn't your run-of-the-mill devotional, quoting the same Bible verses and talking about the same problems and giving the same solutions as everyone else. She uses funny stories and examples to show you truth. Honestly, I'm about 237 times more likely (yep, just made up a random number) to remember a story than a sermon. I remember visiting another church about a year and a half ago: Do I remember any Bible verses from the preacher's sermon? Nope. Do I remember a catchy title? Nope. Do I remember any prayers he prayed? Nope. Do I remember the powerful story that he told near the start? Absolutely.

That's the beauty of this devotional: stories. Stories are how I learn, stories are how I remember, and stories are how I change.

3) Teenage POV. A lot of devotionals you find for teen girls are written by women that might already have teenage kids. There's nothing wrong with that - but it can be a lot easier for a teenage girl to relate to someone like her. Maybe Ellen doesn't have thirty-five years of life experience, but she has an advantage that a grown woman will never have - she's a teen. I believe what she says about her problems because she's a teen. I hang on to her words because she's a teen. I make the decision to trust her because she's a teen. As a teen, this fact is very, very important to me.

4) Well-done indie book. There are too many indie books with amateur cover/design and typos/poor grammar. This book? Naw! Beautiful cover, professional formatting, and all-together well-done. Great job, Ellen!!! You make the indie book industry look good! :D

Cons:

1) It's over :D That's pretty much it. I need more of this.

Note: The writing style was sometimes not quite to my taste, but I'm not going to call that a con. A lot of times it was spot on!

Content: Clean, as I would hope a devotional book would be :D Some devotions geared towards teen girls mention things that some might consider "inappropriate." In general, I don't have a problem with this - but if you do, then don't worry about reading Ellen's book! It's clean enough to hand to a six-year-old (not that they would understand everything, but it's that clean).

Links: 

Amazon    Goodreads

And that's all for today! See you next time!

If you would like to sign up to be featured for an Indie Author Spotlight, you can find more information and the sign-up form here!

Love,

Have you read Ellen's book yet? If so, what did you think?