Theo of Golden

Oh boy. This was bad. It read like a wealthy Christian’s wet dream about living out a white-savior complex in its purest form, complete with every painfully stereotypical caricature imaginable. A semi-crazy homeless woman who is secretly a genius. A poorly educated but sympathetic Black man. A Vietnam veteran with impossibly clichéd war stories. An abused woman with a cartoonishly cruel boyfriend. A grumpy father with no social skills who only cares about his work. It never ends.

Every character is completely flat and seems to exist only as a cute little sad story designed to serve Theo’s moral journey. And those stories all seem written to support a very specific worldview. The most unintentionally funny one, to me, was the woman whose father supposedly pushed her into business instead of letting her focus on being a wife and mother. It feels so far removed from real life that it comes across like a hardline conservative’s fantasy of what “evil liberalism” looks like. And of course the man who hit the little girl with his car was “illegal,” because forgiving an immigrant makes you extra saintly. The Black characters also speak in a bizarre, exaggerated dialect that feels like it wandered in from a Mark Twain novel.

The writing itself is distractingly amateur, with constant over-describing of the most basic objects, emotions, and events. Every piece of dialogue feels clichéd and predictable, right down to the accompanying facial expressions and mannerisms, as if the reader cannot be trusted to infer anything on their own. There is barely a plot to speak of, and the portrait-giveaway scenes become so repetitive that they start to feel like variations of the same scene. I just could not buy into this contrived little world where everyone is stunned by the mere existence of kindness, as if basic human decency is a concept they have never encountered before.

And we are never allowed to forget how good and kind Theo is, because the author never misses an opportunity to bash us over the head with it. I lost count of how many times various characters comment on how strange or extraordinary Theo’s actions are, just so the reader can be reminded yet again that Theo’s goodness is rare and special. And did you know Theo does not want attention for what he is doing? Isn’t that incredible? Don’t worry, the book will remind you about that approximately one million times. If Theo is supposed to represent Jesus, I guess that makes me the devil, because I was not impressed.

Book author: Allen Levi