Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

PROS: If you are a fan of the Duggar or Vuolo family, this book is a nice piece of nostalgia. A lot of what they’re talking about are things fans will remember and be able to smile, laugh, cringe, and cry with. The book is also written in a conversational style that makes you feel like you're hanging out with the Vuolos in a coffee shop and they’re telling you their life story. So, that’s nice. CONS: In the beginning of the book, it is stated that Jinger and Jeremy are “getting vulnerable” with their readers. In reality, very little is revealed that the audience doesn’t already know from watching the TLC shows or from things they’ve already revealed about themselves. I feel like most of the anecdotes are things you could already gather by just paying attention to their media presence. In my opinion, you’re paying anywhere from $12-25 for something you could already get elsewhere. Also, when it comes to topics where they could have actually “gotten vulnerable” (namely, scandals with a certain infamous sibling), the subject is handled in a very wishy-washy way. They don’t name the sibling or the scandals, and the parts where they discuss it are almost like an afterthought. Like, “Oh, right, that happened... anyway, back to Jeremy’s theology debates with Jessa.” Listen, I’m not saying they needed to delve into every detail of the scandals or their feelings on it. Nor am I just grubbing for “the dirt.” What I’m saying is that dancing around the subject just doesn’t make a lot of sense. The whole world already knows what happened... there’s no point in downplaying it. People are going to talk about it no matter what, so you might as well just be honest. Last criticism: I got the eBook version and there were major format problems. The font would randomly switch from one section to the next. At first, I thought something was wrong with my eReader; turns out, it is the text itself. This was a pretty sloppy error on the part of whomever was responsible for formatting the eBook— not to mention pretty tedious as a reader trying to get through it. All that said: I disagree with the criticism that the book is too preachy. It is well-known that they are religious. Jinger’s family is notoriously religious and Jeremy’s a minister. Of course their book is going to be preachy! It is also marketed as a Christian book, so any critique of it being preachy is moot.