Where Do I Go? - Neta Jackson

Title: Where Do I Go?
Author: Neta Jackson
Genre: Christian fiction
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 370 pages
Date read: May, 2009

Gabrielle Fairbanks has nearly lost touch with the carefree, spirited young woman she was when she married her husband fifteen years ago. But when the couple moves to Chicago to accommodate Philip's business ambitions, Gabby finds the chance to make herself useful.

It's there she meets the women of Manna House Women's Shelter; they need a Program Director-and she has a degree in social work. She's in her element, feeling God's call on her life at last, even though Philip doesn't like the changes he sees in her. But things get rough when Philip gives Gabby an ultimatum: quit her job at the shelter or risk divorce and losing custody of their sons.

Gabby must take refuge, as in the song they sing at Sunday night worship: "Where do I go when there's no one else to turn to?... I go to the Rock I know that's able, I go to the Rock."

I'd been eagerly awaiting this book ever since it came out in December, and finally got my hands on it today. I sat down and dived into it right away, hoping to find the same sense of "coming home" as the Yada Yada Prayer Group series had given me. Therefore it really pains me to only give it three stars, but it was just a very, very uncomfortable read.

Granted, it had its good points where it did resemble the YYPG series as much as I could have wished for (which is the only reason I still gave it as much as 3 stars), but mostly it left a bad taste in my mouth. Gabby's husband was SO incredibly unpleasant and seemed to have NO redeeming factors at all. I won't say he was so bad as to make him unbelievable though, and that was what made it so unpleasant to read - I could too easily imagine a person like that. It might have helped if I'd read the back blurb of the book - I might have felt more prepared - but I didn't, so I wasn't.

So though I did love reading about Gabby's life at the Manna home, the book itself wasn't the comfort read I'd expected and counted on it to be. Instead of leaving me with a content and happy feeling, it pulled the rug away under me at the very last minute and had me shedding tears of frustration and hopelessness rather than anything else.

Not what I had expected of a book by Neta Jackson, and therefore my immediate reaction was a HUGE disappointment.

After having thought about it for awhile though, I have realised that perhaps my mistake was in thinking these books would be as independent as the books in the YYPG series were, and that this should be viewed as a prequel - an introduction to the rest of the series, more than anything else. The age-old story of a person having to hit rock bottom before he/she is able and willing to listen to God's still small voice inside them. It doesn't fit exactly, because it did seem like Gabby had already started listening, but I had been thinking that she was leaning too much on her own understanding and not on God's.

I hope I was wrong in assuming it was meant as a self-contained novel and that the next book in the series will explain the ending of this one. I still believe Neta Jackson can turn this into something beautiful, but it depends very much on how she writes the sequel as that will "make it or break it" for me. It'll be published in September - guess I'll know then.

I so wanted to love it.

Book List

Where Do I Go? - Neta Jackson

Title: Where Do I Go?
Author: Neta Jackson
Genre: Christian fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
# pages: 370 pages
Date read: May 2009, July 2015

Gabrielle Fairbanks has nearly lost touch with the carefree, spirited young woman she was when she married her husband fifteen years ago. But when the couple moves to Chicago to accommodate Philip's business ambitions, Gabby finds the chance to make herself useful.

It's there she meets the women of Manna House Women's Shelter; they need a Program Director-and she has a degree in social work. She's in her element, feeling God's call on her life at last, even though Philip doesn't like the changes he sees in her. But things get rough when Philip gives Gabby an ultimatum: quit her job at the shelter or risk divorce and losing custody of their sons.

Gabby must take refuge, as in the song they sing at Sunday night worship: "Where do I go when there's no one else to turn to?... I go to the Rock I know that's able, I go to the Rock."

This is my second attempt at reviewing this book, because I don't think I did it justice the first time around.

At a first glance the book was a huge disappointment. I'd come to it expecting warmth and comfort, I left it crying of frustration and hopelessness. Any book powerful enough to do that to me deserves more than the original three stars I have it - for writing, even if it doesn't for plot.

And the plot was very unpleasant to read. Instead of starting with a person who was ill off and whose circumstances improved through the book, we're here presented with a person whose life at the outlook seems... if not great, then at least satisfactory, but whose circumstances deteriorate through the book, leaving her with the rug pulled out from underneath her at the last page.

It's the first few chapters of Job, before God stepped in.

What really annoyed me about the book was that this was where it ended. There was no resolution, no last-minute waving of a magic wand (which is good, I guess - I don't like last-minute wavings of magic wands in an otherwise realistic book). All there was was an incredibly open ending, and a woman whose life had suddenly hit rock bottom.

This is where my thoughts were at last night, and why I wrote the review I did.

Now that I've slept on it and thought about it some more, I've realized that my mistake was in assuming it was a self-contained novel. If instead I view it as an introduction or a prequel to the series, it changes from being frustrating an disappointing to being incredibly powerful and captivating. What I wrote yesterday (review saved here for reference) still stands, but my perspective has changed. It'll be interesting to see where Neta Jackson takes the series from here.

I guess I'll know come September.

Reread 2015: It was with some trepidation that I picked up this book for a reread - I remembered only too vividly how I'd felt on first reading it. Fortunately, knowing what was coming made it a lot easier to stomach, and the later books definitely make up for it. Still, I had to put it down from time to time, when I knew something unpleasant was coming up :-P But the end was not nearly as much of a shock to the system when I could go straight over to my shelves and pick up the next book.