52 great fun ways to spend time with my wife? Yes, please!
Little Book of Great Dates
by Greg and Erin Smalley
Tyndale
September 2013
This leather-like dark royal blue book is gift sized with 52 two-page long “date” ideas. The Smalleys do a great job opening the reader up to re-evaluating what it means to date. Instead of spending time at a restaurant or going to a movie this book gives the reader a ton of fun things to try together. The focus is definitely on building relationship rather than amusement.
Some favorites included picking a challenging meal to cook where the focus is on working together to follow the directions then enjoying the meal together. Included are discussion questions around teamwork, what worked well and what didn’t and the next dish you want to work together on.
The book is full of great stuff, but one thing bothered me on my read through. On date 23 (page 62) “Time for a Check in” the reader is directed to the Smalley’s website to take a survey/ test to see where they are at in their relationship. A good idea. The catch? It costs $29.99. This is the written equivalent of the very unpopular app practice of In App Purchasing where you buy the app for a low cost (or free) but to get the full experience you have to purchase add-ons. I don’t like it on apps and I definitely don’t like it in my books. If the check-up is something we should do and we already purchased the book we should get a onetime code to take the test for free.
Overall, I’m a fan of the book and what it’s trying to accomplish. I love the redefinition of date and the focus on building the relationship rather than (only) having fun.
This book was provided by the publisher as a review copy.
Scott Asher is the Editor-in-Chief of BookGateway.com. His personal blog is AshertopiA – a land flowing with milk and honey… and a lot of sticky people where he turns real life into stupid cartoons, writes on Christianity, Zombies, and whatever else he wants and posts Bible studies from his classes at church.
This book was provided by the publisher as a review copy.