Best Christian Book to Make You Really Uncomfortable (in a Good Way): When Hatmaker noticed 7 areas of blatant excess—food, clothes, possessions, media, waste, spending, and stress—in her middle-class life, she resolved to spend 7 months fasting from them, one item per month. 7 is the result. Hatmaker's a friendly and funny narrator: she manages to make you like her and make you squirm at the same time.

It's been nearly four years since I found Hatmaker (along with the rest of the world) through her book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, and I've been more or less impatiently waiting for her next book. I was delighted to read that the title doesn't just refer to wholehearted, holy living but to that phrases' other meaning: for crying out loud. Wise and funny, full of lots of grace and Jesus, but also high-waisted jeans and Netflix addictions. Now I want to start a supper club—read it and you'll see what I mean.

From the publisher: "New York Times bestselling author, Big Sister Emeritus, and Chief BFF Jen Hatmaker returns with another round of hilarious tales, shameless honesty, and hope for the woman who has forgotten her moxie. Jen Hatmaker parlays her own triumphs and tragedies into a sigh of relief for all normal, fierce women everywhere. We can choose to live undaunted 'in the moment' no matter what the moments hold, and lead vibrant, courageous, grace-filled lives."

I read this back in April out of pure voyeuristic curiosity and it was a really good book. This is a big personal story, but more literary in nature. From the publisher: "In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea-and how she made it to shore. In candid, sur­prisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife-the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn't ask for. And, drawing on all resources-from without and within-Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point. More than one woman's story, Awake is a critical analysis of the story given to all of us: the story of gender limitations, religious subservience, body shame, self-erasure. With refreshing candor, Jen explores a midlife renaissance-grieving what's lost, cherishing possibility, and entering the second half of life wide awake."