Official Review: How God Can Help Make Your Dreams Come T...

Catie139 · Post by **Catie139** » 01 Jul 2020, 20:59

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "How God Can Help Make Your Dreams Come True" by Richard Shinn.]

1 out of 4 stars

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The life of every person can teach us something about ourselves, and serve as an inspiration for those times when we are faced with our greatest challenges. This belief is what led me to choose How God Can Help Your Dreams Come True by Richard Shinn. It is in this vein that he recounts some of his own challenges.

At the age of three, Shinn was sent to live with his grandparents because his own parents could not take care of him. He mentions some of the memories of this time, and the impact that this had on him as a youngster. It was around the time of World War II (as far as I could gather) that his grandfather died, leaving very little to Shinn's grandmother. This obviously created more challenges for both of them.

During his senior year of high school, Shinn dropped out in order to enlist in the Navy. It wasn't until he was discharged and took a couple of civilian jobs, first as an electrician and then as a postal worker, that he met some co-workers who introduced him to Christianity. They became such a profound influence in his life that he sought out his parents with whom he could share his new-found faith. However, this was met with hostility.

Shinn goes on to recount his experiences leading up to his graduation from Grand Canyon University in 2018 with a business degree. This was after several attempts at completing his education, which is recounted throughout the book.

Though he doesn't mention it specifically, it appears that the author grew up speaking primarily Chinese. Having taught English to Asians, I see that the grammatical and spelling errors made throughout the book are very typical of many Asian speakers. The mistakes made were so numerous that it made reading the book very difficult.

Ideas were not developed well, and sentences within paragraphs did not connect with each other. This led to much confusion as to the time frame of events.

Because the book is so short (a mere 43 pages), subtitles are a great way of organizing the information. However, almost every paragraph had a subtitle, making it very unwieldy, and adding to the confusion. There was a lot of inconsistency in the subtitles also, as some were phrases, and some were complete sentences. This made the lack of development of the story even more obvious.

By the end of the book, I did not feel that Shinn had really made his point of showing how God can really help one's dreams come true. Perhaps that was because of the state of confusion I was in. Based on the amount of errors and difficulty of understanding sentences, I rank this book 1 out of 4 stars.

Several instances mentioned in the book could be seen as stories that would show how God influences people's lives. With more expansion on these ideas, this could be a good book to inspire others. it is definitely geared more toward those who have a Christian world view.

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How God Can Help Make Your Dreams Come True
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Joseph_ngaruiya · Post by **Joseph_ngaruiya** » 03 Jul 2020, 03:12

I hope that the author can make the required changes.

Priyanka2304 · Post by **Priyanka2304** » 03 Jul 2020, 13:12

Glad to know how the author came closer to God. Hope the inconsistencies in the book be removed to give it smooth readability.

Chinelookeke · Post by **Chinelookeke** » 03 Jul 2020, 15:27

I would advise the author to look into the errors and make the book a lot easier to understand because I believe with the title ,the book would be interesting. Thanks to the reviewer for telling us about the errors.

kljrox · Post by **kljrox** » 03 Jul 2020, 16:31

How unfortunate that the author didn't seek editorial help before releasing his book. The story of his life and the hardships he faced, and apparently overcame, would have been a good witness to God. Thank you for an insightful and honest review.

Vic Chimezie · Post by **Vic Chimezie** » 04 Jul 2020, 13:01

My strong guess is that this book was self published. In spite of that, a lot of self published books are professional edited. Thank you for the honest review. I hope the author does the needful!

GiselleBengochea · Post by **GiselleBengochea** » 04 Jul 2020, 21:20

Any book that encourages one to follow Jesus is definitely worth the read! This sounds like a great book! The fact that the author is not a native speaker who has published a book in English is quite ADMIRABLE! WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT! You did an excellent job in the promotion of this book! Great review!