Reviews for Billy Goat Hill

The average rating for Billy Goat Hill based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-10-12 00:00:00 Allan Roper I couldn't finish it.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-31 00:00:00 Alexandra Linnenbank I have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with this book. At times I was enthralled by the story of these two brothers, their adventures, their relationship, their fears and their triumphs. I thought the writing was excellent...well most of it anyway. I'm not sure if this counts as a spoiler or not, but at the end of the book (after the conclusion of the story) the author affirms what I had already guessed, which was that much of the story and events described in the book were reminiscent of his own childhood with his brother. What the author also divulges, however, is that this version of the story is not the original publication, but rather it is an adaptation of his first book which he self published. In THIS version he was paid by a Christian publisher to insert all sorts of out of place jesus stuff that, in my opinion, completely ruined the book. Don't get me wrong, I am a Christian myself, and I love to read great nonfiction theological works and even more so I love to read authentic accounts of personal testimonies written by grace embued believers about their conversions. That being said, the religiosity inserted into this book seemed very forced and inauthentic. I'm not questioning the authors faith, just honestly critiquing his ability to insert fictitious "faith shaping" events into the story in a believable way. It is a classic case of taking a great work of art (an authentic-even if embellished-memoir of the author's childhood thoughts, feelings, emotions, and inner dialogue) and ruining it by trying to "christianize" it like they do the stupid tshirts that change slogans from "got milk" to "got jesus" or from "Reeses Pieces" to "Jesus FreesUs". At the end of the day I cannot recommend this book, though I must admit it held my interest the entire time. I would very much like to see a copy of the original version and review THAT BOOK on its own merits; I suspect the review would be MUCH more favorable.