I read this book between July 8th and July 11th, 2019 and gave it one star. This is a Christian book, and even though I am not a Christian nor I'll ever be one, I have come across my fair share of Christian books, and sadly I haven't had the best experience with them lately. I hoped that this novel would change that for me since the "challenge" element is always fun, and since I enjoy reading about plots that develop over a short time. 

This is a quick read and not one that requires too much thinking, in my opinion, which was really fortunate given that I found issues from the very first page. One of these issues was the insertion of full sentences in parenthesis into nearly every paragraph. To me, that sort of stopped the reading flow, which meant that I had a hard time getting into the story. 

Besides being Christian fiction, this is a young adult novel, but the style felt really forced. It was narrated in the first person and the main character is a female teenager, but it read like a middle-aged woman trying to sound like a young person and failing at it. Like I said, I kind of liked the idea of this being a challenge, albeit one related to a religion I don't observe. The very first chapter, which marks the beginning of day one, is preceded by a bible quote, and I thought that it was a nice idea to have the book divided into each of the five days and have a quote as a header at the start of a new day. That wasn't the case, though. Sometimes we got quotes and others we didn't, and it was just messy. 

I only give one star to books that have a structural problem, which means that it is basically trying to reproduce ideas that are somehow violent or harmful to a group of people. I seriously hoped that this book would be more about Jesus' teachings related to "love thy neighbor" and stuff of the sort, but what I got was a whole lot of slut-shaming and a main character who as angsty and very unlikeable and who used her Christianity as an afterthought. 

Honestly, though, I really appreciate when characters in a book have strong beliefs and stand by them, and I thought this book would be all about this girl trying to find herself through the scripture while fulfilling a challenge. I thought she would stand up to her friend who was sort of forcing her to date a guy, and that we would see another version of what chastity means or something. That would've been way more interesting, but that wasn't the case. In fact, the love interest happens to be a Christian, and that clearly makes him super fit for her, so basically we got a typical high-school based young adult novel with a little Jesus here and there. 

I don't mind an unlikeable main character, but Andrea was just petty and insufferable. She referred to one of her friends as a "man-hater" because she was a feminist. Of course, you can imagine the portrayal of a feminist the author came up with...just ridiculous. Again with the slut-shaming issue, Andrea seems to be obsessed with hating on a girl who is confident and also possibly physically attractive. At some points, it was as if a man were writing the book because it was so retrograde and chauvinistic. I know Christians who would be offended to be represented by Andrea. 

If we talk specifically about the mechanics of the book, it was very poorly edited. There were commas and other punctuation signs missing, which made reading not as easy or pleasurable. Additionally, there were some bits in Spanish that had been clearly translated by Google because they made no sense. What is it with white authors inserting Spanish into their bland stories to make them "spicier"? Another problem was the lack of proper referencing when adding quotes from other sources. Not even quotation marks were used. I mean, if you're going to casually add "curiouser and curiouser" in your book, maybe think about adding a footnote to clarify that it was Lewis Carroll who came up with that.

Andrea is starting that complicated phase of adolescence in which one already has some definitions of what  wants for life and begins to reject others. She is now god-fearing, extremely obedient to her parents, and loyal to her friends. But her friend Amy is urging her to invite rookie Luke to Homecoming banquet at the Christian school where she studies and her parents do not want her to get involved with any boy, just devote herself to her piano studies and recital.

Luke is a true Prince Charming and a saint because he does everything to please Andrea and uses a thousand subterfuges to stay close to her but the girl runs away from him and ignores him at various times, which made me very angry and at some points of reading bored . Even coming from the trauma of parental divorce and suffering from his father's pressure, he proves to be more mature than his age and I fell in love with him.

The basis of the story is fantastic, I love books that use biblical passages and positive messages, but the writer exaggerated in creating 200 pages of a girl only running away from a cute-handsome-perfect boy. I think she could have give more dynamic by showing situations with Andrea's friend  and even putting in more Bible messages. She missed the chance to make a 6/5 star book.

I really enjoyed the accounts of Andrea's diaries of challenges where she always ends with a biblical passage. I'm going to look for more of this author's books, because I believe that she should gradually would mature her writing and have many chances to write more fun stories like this one.
4 / 5stars

I enjoyed this book. I loved the premise of this book. I loved Andrea as a character and the surrounding characters. This is the first book that I have read  by Cindy K green and i will be reading more of her work in the near future i also enjoyed the christin aspect to this novel it was different for me because I haven't read a lot of christian novels. This was an entertaining novel throughout

I didn't realise this was "Christian" fiction when I requested it at NetGalley, but it wasn't too OTT in that regard which was nice. Although I kind of missed what Andrea's five day challenge actually WAS because I pretty much skimmed over her letters to god, oops. But yeah it wasn't overly religious, just a couple of mentions of bible study etc... and then she and Luke "read the bible" after homecoming which I'm wondering is that a weird new euphemism or did they legit read the bible?

Anyway, I did like this enough but it felt terribly long and my interest started to wane... and I also didn't like Andrea as a main character - I honestly don't see why she couldn't have just told Luke straight away "look, my parents are super strict and won't let me date" instead of making up wishy-washy excuses which then in turn made him feel really bad.

Also I feel like "my parents won't let me go to homecoming/prom" could be an entire genre of American high school novels! As an Aussie I find it all a bit fascinating... and don't quite get it either... makes me wonder if American parents in real life are all a bunch of meanies too, because homecoming sounds like kind of a big deal school event that a kid should be banned from only in extreme circumstances as a super punishment? Not just "oh you have that piano recital to concentrate on"...

And let me talk about that - it really felt like Andrea's parents were forcing her to become a concert pianist, and that their dreams of her going to Julliard aren't really her dreams. 

I probably wouldn't read any more in this series, but then again I might.

Andrea and the 5 day challenge was entertaining throughout. A nice subtle mix of teen emotion and religion at no point was it over the top. Andrea's teen life is very relatable and it is very easy to connect with the character.