Assessment:

Idea/Concept: Tom and Wilma English's Spiritual Boot Camp is a biblical self-help books geared toward creative, imaginative, and thoughtful readers. The authors provide a motivational guidebook for receptive individuals. 

Prose: The Englishes write with style, clarity, and gracefulness. They contextualize their advice with real-world examples, while they develop most of their arguments thoroughly, persuasively, and with scriptural back-up. They aspire to be life coaches in prose, with just a touch of the drill sergeant for good measure, and they mostly achieve this. The frequent capitalized words are not as inviting as italics.

Originality: Ultimately, while it may look superficially similar to other books in its genre, Spiritual Boot Camp for Creators & Dreamers is uniquely thorough, well-written, persuasive, and inspiring.

Execution: The book's premise and precepts are mostly familiar from other secular and biblical advice books. Here are chapters about visualizing goals, managing time, finding and maintaining motivation, learning to pray, and other well-covered advice areas. Fortunately, their treatment of these common topics is fresh, with engaging, often surprising examples, such as the 15-page exploration of the story of Captain America. Further, some of the Englishes’ advice is original to the authors, such as the chapters suggesting that readers find "a Barnabas." Also unique: the Englishes' jokes and their welcome approach to reconciling faith and science.

Date Submitted: October 23, 2019