Shelf Full of Books

Patricia and her teenage son Paul fought constantly through his teenage years before the accident killed her and Paul’s younger sister the night they have nasty words and Patricia kicks him out of the car to walk the rest of the way home in the cold and dark.

While Paul was growing up he watched the interactions that his mother had with Carlos, the man she lived with and how he treated her. When Patricia left Carlos because he wasn’t able to truly be there for her and the children except to pay the bills, Paul started behaving like Carlos and talking to Patricia with the same manner and attitude.

Raising the Enemy is about how sometimes it feels more like our children feel like our enemies rather than people we love. There are times when all we seem to get from them is confrontation after confrontation until as parents we are at our wits end and we just want to scream at them as Patricia did.

This story reminds parents that they are not alone when they feel like all they ever do is fight with their teens. They are given verses from the Bible related to the situations in the story that may be helpful to the reader.

If Patricia had known when she met Carlos that her relationship with him would have caused all the twists and turns in her life and made her feel like living with her son was raising the enemy, she probably would have thought twice about getting together with him. Those twists and turns affected Paul profoundly and permanently. You’ll have to listen to the book to the end to find out how.

I thought that the book was quite interesting and would touch a nerve with most parents of teenagers as I think parent-teen relationship are fraught with a lot of tension at times.

I had a problem with my copy of this book as it kept skipping all the way through the book. At each skipping point, a few words would be missing. I don’t think anything important was missing, but it was very annoying listening to the skipping in the recording.

I didn’t always see how the scripture related to the portion of the story that it was next to. Most of the time it was very clear, but sometimes I scratched my head in puzzlement at the relationship. This was even after I had listened to the story several times.

Overall, I found Raising the Enemy a very interesting story to listen to. The reader’s enunciation was clear. I gave this book 3 stars out of 5 rather than 4 stars out of 5 due to the skipping of the recording all throughout the book.

Thank you to the author for providing a copy of the audiobook in exchange for a fair and honest review. A positive opinion was not required. All thoughts are my own.

To see my complete review visit Shelf Full of Books http://kathrynsshelffullofbooks.blogspot.com/2015/08/book-review-raising-enemy-audible-audio.html