If you’re a fan of the “Humor for the Heart” book series, then you’ll probably like Boyette’s slapstick brand of humor. It works to great effect in stories like “A Gripping Tale”, “Going Up”, and “It’s Alive!” It’s only when Boyette diverts from the hilarity of her mother and sister’s antics that the stories falter a bit. This is rare, but worth mentioning. Stories that read more like advice columns crop up intermittently in the book, and they’re good, but they don’t shine quite as well. “How to Lose A 100 lbs. In Five Days” and “Gone Fishing” rely more heavily on Boyette’s Christian background. They can be interesting, but are not nearly as entertaining.

Boyette’s witty charm is geared toward the female side of Christianity, and revolves largely around shopping, cooking, dieting, and travel. The author makes her demographic clear on the cover, and even the title makes no bones about who the book is for. Mature Christian women will get a kick out her taut tales of daily life.

More skeptical readers will note that the moral connections and teachings are often flimsy in their connection with the story. For instance, what does going fishing have to do with converting people over to Christ? Oh, because we’re “fishing” everyday for new believers! Which would imply that we intend to behead and eat those new believers. It also implies that we should bait and hook those believers with the promise of Christian rewards. The equations never seem to add up correctly, and that makes the moral of many of the stories feel like a jump.

But to fret about the stretch of Boyette’s Christian morals as they relate to her short stories would be to miss her overall point. And I doubt that she’ll get a lot of flak for it from her readers. If she were writing dramatic parables then this would be a major problem because a lack of clear connection between the story and the moral destroys the effect of the parable. She makes it clear that this is comedy, not parable. So the stories don’t lose an ounce of charm in the transition.