I won this book in a Goodreads contest, and when I opened the package I was immediately impressed with both the outside book jacket and the interior design. This book probably has one of the prettiest and most "appropriate" book covers I've ever seen. It has the hand of God emerging from the heavens, holding together a rope (a cord) of three strands. This book is about just that—how God's hand binds together the lives of Tricia, Peggy and Hilarie, who each represent one strand of a cord, in order to show an example of God's love and grace.
A CORD OF THREE STRANDS by Sara Berry and Tricia Robbins is based on the true story of a "good Christian girl" named Tricia who goes through a period of rebelliousness after she graduates high school. Soon after she starts college, Tricia discovers she's pregnant, and is overcome with emotions. She had just begun getting reacquainted with God through encouragement from friends at school, such as Jessica and Shane. In the end, Tricia "comes back to God," she gives her baby girl (Hilarie) up for adoption, and she also finds her calling by giving talks to audiences of teens about her experience.
Another main character of the book is Peggy. She and her husband Mitch had tried for several years to conceive a child, but several surgeries and lost dollars later, they still were childless. They finally decided to try to adopt a baby, but that too always had one sad ending after another. After 18 years, this couple still had no children and Peggy, a devout Christian, began to strongly question God's plans for her in this situation. His plan is finally revealed when the adoption for baby Hilarie does goes through, and then as the years pass Hilarie grows up to be a sweet Christian girl … and winds up contacting her birth mother, Tricia.
The three females begin to have get-togethers, and all of them come to the realization that God has His own plans for everyone, and they all feel fortunate that His plan included the binding of these "strands" to make one strong cord.
I really wanted to give this book more stars, especially since I received it for free and wanted to help show my gratitude, but I just can't give it more as I thought it was "OK" and not one star more of "I liked it." (I didn't DISlike it, but again, thought it was just "OK.")
I like that it's based on a true story, and I like the "overall lesson" the book is trying to teach, but unfortunately I had a lot more dislikes than likes when reading this book.
One of things I didn't care for was this book was a tad too "religious-e" for my taste in several places by the sometimes seemingly "over the top" words and/or phrases the authors used. I'm a Christian who prefers religious messages to be delivered in a different manner.
I found several grammatical errors in this book, which is something that will always make me lower the rating of a book. I also disliked toward the end of the book, how years passed from one chapter to the next in a "blunt" fashion, without really saying too much about what happened in the years in between. An example of the years flying by is in one chapter Hilarie is six years old, then the next chapter she's 10, and then the next chapter she's at least 16 because she can drive a car.
I want to end on a positive note, as I have great respect for other writers and the amount of work and passion that goes into writing and "creating" a book. I want to say that I do think people who are not put-off by the kind of items that I stated above that bothered me, and who have read a lot of inspirational/Christian books—will probably enjoy A CORD OF THREE STRANDS. I also am willing sometime down the line to read another book written by either of these authors.