Monday, February 29, 2016

Reviewing The Gift of Friendship

The Gift of Friendship
Edited by Dawn Camp

The Gift of Friendship is a collection of blog posts from various authors, speakers, and bloggers on the topic of friendship.  Centered around topics like “Building Community,” “It Takes a Friend to Be a Friend,” “Friendship on Purpose,” and “Vulnerability,” each essay Camp gathered follows the typical Blog formula: easy to read, a few lines of self-deprecating humor, and a quick message.  None of it gets too deeply, but much of it makes you smile.  And none of them will take you more than five minutes to read.

Reading this compilation made me arrive at three realizations: 1) I have a handful of really great, really deep, and really true friendships; 2) This may not be as common as I originally thought; 3) I don’t really like this Blog format of a book.  I found myself and my circle of friends in a few of the pages.  I was reminded to tell two of my closest friends how deeply connected to them I am and how grateful I am that they know me so well and still choose for some crazy reason to keep coming back to me.   And how amazing it was to spend the weekend in their company . . . all alone, no kids, no husbands, just these beautiful women and a few others from our circle. Those are gifts you find in some corners of your world, and Camp calls you to remember them and cherish them.

I didn’t love this book. It was fine. Good, even, in some parts. But I feel richer for the friendships, not for the words I read in the book.  Except for the nuggets Camp included in between some of the essays.  She quoted Scripture (which is always good, even in this case where it sometimes seemed a stretch to fit the topic), and she quoted other books on friendship. The C. S. Lewis quotes she included from The Four Loves are the real gems in this book.   And while I probably won’t pick up The Gift of Friendship to read again, I will definitely be borrowing The Four Loves.  From a friend.



Disclaimer: I received this book from Revell through the Revell Reads Blog Tour program in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with FTC guidelines.

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