Dune View Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463300992
Contemporary Fiction, 2019

I’d been lucky in that in my occasional forays into Christian fiction, I’ve never come across something that resembles outright evangelism. Oh, I’m not against being preached to about the joys of finding religion, especially if the preacher in question happened to be hot and charismatic, it’s just that I’ve always wondered why so many evangelists tend to be so strident and judgmental that they end up driving away heathens instead. If I were the Pope, I’d make it a new edict that all priests have to be hot with strong jawlines and beautiful sad eyes, as well as a masculine voice to make sure that every church will be packed to maximum capacity by any human being that digs hot men.

So, Carried Away. with a full stop. This is about Carrie, our protagonist that grows up in an abusive crazy Christian community, where everyone from her parents to the parents of her boyfriend hand out slaps and even kicks like they are trying to audition for the next Crusade. She flees the place when she turns 18, determined to be someone famous, only to crash and burn until she finds religion again. She then lives happily ever after, singing songs to Jesus and what not. That’s the end.

If you have read the official synopsis of this thing, you may be thinking, “Wait, does this mean the synopsis actually tells the entire story in a more abbreviated manner?” Well, yes. Congratulations, now you don’t have to spend a dollar to find out the whole story, heh.

Here’s the thing: the story, by itself, has plenty of potential to be a dramatic, emotional read. Sure, the story line isn’t new, and it has been done many times before, but still, another trip down that line can’t hurt if the story were done well.

Unfortunately, Todd Selleck wrote the whole thing out like he was plotting a shopping list. This is what happens. Carrie does that next. So she goes to this place. She does that thing there. She feels very bad and sad. The whole thing is as dramatic as biting on hard plain biscuits. I’d expect Carrie’s religious epiphany would be more poignant, heart-wrenching, but no, Mr Selleck just tells me that this is what happened to Carrie, she feels this, she then does that, and look, she’s happy now, bye, the end, God be with everyone.

As a result of this, Carried Away. feels more like a religious tract than a story. I get what the author is trying to say here, that God loves us, even if certain whackjob POS types that claim to worship him didn’t feel the same way about us, and in the end, He is there to pick us up when we have hit rock bottom. However, the delivery of the message is dry, uninteresting, and perfunctory.

For a similar message but done with far more unbridled emotions that will likely resonate with an angry lost soul, I’d recommend hitting up YouTube, Spotify, or wherever for Sinéad O’Connor’s Take Me to Church. Yes, she’s a Muslim now, but if you ask me, that only drives home how, despite the differences in the many religions in this world, we are all the same deep inside, united by our search for inner peace and a meaning in our existence, to seek someone that will love us unconditionally.

Oh yes, this one. Well, it’s what it is. Take me to church indeed.