Book Review: Couples Who Pray

Couples Who Pray:
The Most Intimate Act Between a Man and a Woman

Squire Rushnell, Louise DuArt

(Note: This book was provided free for review by the publisher. This did not affect the review in any way.

As a part of Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze book review program, I get to choose books that the publisher will send me to read and review here on my blog. I thought that Couples Who Pray would be good for both my wife and me and as a resource to offer to other couples.

I was wrong.

To be honest, I was pretty disappointed in this book. It wasn’t at all what I had expected. In fact, there were several places it fell short.

1) A big letdown had to do with the claim on the top of the cover: *Includes the 40 Day Prayer Challenge*.

“That would be great!”, I thought. Unfortunately, the “40 Day Prayer Challenge” is little more than, “We challenge you to pray for 5 minutes a day for 40 days.” Didn’t need a book for that!

2) The whole premise of the book seems to be, “If you pray for just 5 minutes a day with your spouse, everything will just be better.”

There is no question that prayer is important or that it can solve marriage and home problems, but it doesn’t just magically happen. Of course, they don’t claim that exactly, but the stories they recount of their famous connections seem to make that case.

3) And that’s the other thing. I don’t mind hearing stories from other people, especially people who I admire or respect for one reason or another.

And this book is full of them (Denzel & Pauletta Washington, Scott & Tracie Hamilton, and Gavin & Patti MacLeod to name a few). But when you put too many of them together, one right after the other, it quickly turns into a bad late-night commercial: “These pills/steps/programs worked for us, and they can work for you, too!”

Overall, this book didn’t come across as a book about prayer as much as a self-help book that happened to feature prayer. Because of this, I can’t give it more than 2 stars.

If you are interested in reading it for yourself, you can find out more about Couples Who Pray at Thomas Nelson or Amazon.com.