Book Review: Pretty Little Pieces by Carmen Schober

Pretty Little Pieces by Carmen Schober - 2 Stars 

This book is all about Georgina and her boyfriend, Lance. They are what everyone calls the next, Chip and Joanna Gaines. They renovate homes for their TV show in Nashville and are the up and up in their relationship and show when things change right when the book starts. From the first chapter, we know the Georgina suffers a miscarriage and her boyfriend Lance says he needs to take a “pause” in their relationship. He didn’t know she was pregnant, and the miscarriage makes him basically “ghost her” after being together for 3 years. The show takes some suffrage, so she starts working to have her own show with Lance out of the picture. She leaves Nashville and finds a new project in a small town in Middle Tennessee when she meets ex-sniper, Cassidy. They start to really like each other and things take off from here.

There are things I liked in this book, but the romance is what ultimately fell flat for me. This book will be somewhat polarizing in the community, in my opinion. I do appreciate authors tackling some tough topics, especially in a Christian fiction. The topics she tackles here include substance abuse, miscarriage, drinking, gun discussions, wavering faith, etc. I agree that it’s important that we have these conversations and appreciate that she had this story very similar to many real life struggles that many people face. However, I do feel like some of the topics could have been handled a little better, (such as the drinking scenes), but appreciate what she was trying to do here. I think someone could be ministered to if they are going through these issues while reading this book because the ending did tie faith in.

I liked the setting in Tennessee, home improvement reality show vibes and the faith mentioned at the end. Cassidy was such a great guy too, I really liked him and his values showed through so well.

What makes this a lower rated book for me is that I didn’t love the romance between Cassidy and Georgina. I don't feel like they had much chemistry together. Honestly, thinking about this from a real-life perspective, since so many other topics were covered in that way, I didn’t love how quickly she was getting into a new relationship after she had so much baggage that I felt like she needed to work through first. On one side, I see how Cassidy could help her work through some of this baggage, especially since he was a Christian and helping her along the way, but on the other hand I felt like it was a very instalove-y lustful relationship more than a cute, sweet romance and that she really needed to go to therapy to work through her issues first, before jumping into this new relationship.

I know many have mentioned they didn’t care for the spice level in this book in some of the scenes between the characters. Looking at it from a Christian fiction perspective, I think she could have toned down some of the descriptions with the kisses and make out sessions.
Honestly, some of the descriptions were unnecessary.

Thank you to NetGalley and Baker Publishing for providing a copy to honestly read and review.