Book Review: Love Does by Bob Goff

I never wrote a review for Ann Voskamp’s One-thousand Gifts.  I regret that a bit because everyone should read that book.  But now, I guess, most of you have.  And I guess that’s a weird way to start out a book review about Bob Goff’s Love Does but for the same reason I didn’t write one about Ann’s book is the same reason I just about didn’t write this post.  And the reason is the message of both of these books touch and move me in places that words simply cannot convey.  It feels like a cheap shot to throw up this post with a pretty picture of the cover and 500 words.  It’s so much more than this. But I really want you to read this book and I just hope that by maybe sharing a few words you might be convinced to pick it up.

Books sometimes come at the right time.  Since starting to read a lot of non-fiction I found this to especially be true.  I usually have a stack of at least 10 books I want to read and at the right time, one finds it’s way to the front of the line.  Bob Goff’s book is one of those.  Except I’d seen the tweets and read the blog posts that all raved about the book.  The minute Love Does popped up on BookSneeze, I knew it needed to go right to the top of the stack.  God’s been rumbling down in my soul lately.  It’s one of those things where everything you see and hear starts singing the same song and you just know it’s a God thing.  Love Does rumbled a lot for me. 

The book reads like a devotional.  But a really, really fun devotional.  A fun devotional that sometimes makes you cry.  I cried more times than I’d like to admit during this book.  I’d be reading and it was like a sentence would somehow reach right down my throat, find my soul, turn it inside out and it’d spill out in tears.  I didn’t have a choice.  Each chapter tells a little snippet from Bob’s whimsical, adventurous life where his love does and then he tells a little more about Jesus.  I usually don’t like devotional books like that.  They read like a Hallmark movie and I’m not too fond of those.  But this was real and interesting and you just never knew where Bob’s adventure would take you next.  And all the while you wonder does someone really live like this?

At the end, I realized Bob’s adventures scare me to death.  I want to live like that in full abandon but I simply don’t know how to do life Bob’s way.  But there’s that rumbling and God doing something and Bob just telling us to take the next right step. I know this book wasn’t an accident. I can’t imagine someone reading this and just being like eh, I don’t get it.  I have no doubts Love Does is going to be loved by all its readers. I hope you’ll be one of them.

I was provided a copy of Love Does by BookSneeze in exchange for this post.  All opinions are my own.