Jessica's Reviews > Girl Meets God

I enjoyed this book. I found it engaging. I liked the voice; I felt like I would enjoy talking to Lauren Winter if I met her. I liked reading it and will probably go back and read portions again.

I had a little trouble with the structure of the book. For the first third of the book or so, I was under the impression we were following a distinct through-line. There seemed to be a narrative going on, with lots of reflection, yes, but with a firm plot that everything tied in to. The book is structured to align with the liturgical year, which itself is a narrative, so it made sense that Winter was setting up her memoir to follow. However, after a while, the through-line seemed to fall apart, and the rest of the book became a collection of reflections on Judaism and Christianity just kind of loosely connected to the liturgical seasons without much connection to each other. I realize memoir doesn't always have the same kind of narrative that fiction does, but I still believe it requires some structure.

In addition, I found myself wishing that the story were being told by an older, more experienced Lauren Winter. Certainly her religious experiences are real, but they are still those of someone very young. I think a rewrite of this memoir in another five or ten or fifteen years would be really compelling.

Finally, I wished more attention had been given to why Winter chose the particular denomination of Christianity she did. The minimal explanation of her reasoning didn't seem to align with her thought process in choosing Orthodox Judaism over Reform or Conservative.