Today, in her home office, Beverly Varnado wears athletic shoes as she creates novels, blogs,
and screenplays. But in her first act as a department store buyer, she strode New York’s Seventh
Avenue searching for the next fashion trend and wearing out an endless parade of high heels. Having recently surrendered her life to God, Beverly found the fashion district an unusual proving ground for her faith, but then she discovered fashionistas in the Bible who provided role models. In her garment industry adventures, Beverly dined at the city’s most iconic restaurants, became stuck in a maniacal elevator, and oh, my. . . who is that emerging from First Class? Each of Beverly’s sometimes-humorous stories carries a message of encouragement. In what could seem a spiritually devoid and superficial world, God made his presence known to Beverly using her circumstances to launch what became a lifetime in ministry. No matter where you find yourself vocationally, learn how God can use your situation to accomplish greater things than you can possibly imagine.
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★★☆☆☆
Author Beverly Varnado worked as a fashion buyer on 7th Avenue of New York City in the 1980s. Prior to that, she had a standard Southern Baptist upbringing in Georgia. After years of working for a major department chain in GA, she writes that over time she was getting more and more of a pull to move to a larger, more urban area of the country, believing that God was calling her to attempt to live virtuously in the sinful wilds of a metropolis such as NYC.... so, she figured, why not just go for it and try NYC itself! This memoir is an account of those years (Varnado now works full-time as a writer).
While the whole "country mouse in a big city" tone to the early portions of the book were charming at first, over time it began to feel as if Varnado were laying it on a little thick for effect. Standard stories of coming from proud Southern stock, rooted in Depression-era can-do / make-do spirit, farmer ancestors, the whole bit... but she also reveals much of her childhood involved easy access to bigger areas like Atlanta... so I doubt she was THAT isolated from "big city" influence, at least to some extent. Maybe not on NYC levels, but still.
I didn't have issue with her story itself so much, but her writing style just did not mesh with me. The tone was alright, a little grating... that, and how she constantly takes seriously, THE TINIEST THING and excitedly exclaims it's a sign from God and runs off to go do something... (even as a believer myself, the sheer number of things / moments she took as signs I found a little silly) but mostly, that aspect was fine.
What bugged me more was how poorly edited this little book was for someone who does this for a living! (She even says flat out in this book that she's convinced God was calling her to a writing career.... She has yet to convince me of this, but moving on....)
She loves telling readers about how she's written multiple books and screenplays (one even optioned for a movie) yet the layout of this particular book was all over the place. Mid-chapter -- sometimes mid-paragraph! -- she has the reader jumping from Georgia to NYC to Los Angeles and back again with only the briefest, choppy transitional words or phrases to indicate the setting had changed. The lack of continuity just aggravated me to no end, leaving me mentally screaming, "My kingdom for a book outline!"
There was also something a little too literal and amateurish to Varnado's writing style here (again, looking at this work as something from someone who does this as a full-time career). Even with non-fiction, I'm a big believer in there still being an element of storytelling flair to the presentation, and there's just not much of that here at all. To give you an idea, there's a whole chapter just on her changing a tire. No joke. And it's about as gripping as you might imagine.
Sure, the tone is casual, conversational... but there's no spice to it, nothing vivid enough to really fully immerse me in her world during this era. I got only a minimal sense of what her contributions to the fashion world were, lessons gained as a wife / mother / friend... it didn't even seem to get that in-depth with her spiritual journey... only messy fragments of these areas of her life I started the book honestly curious about. It made it difficult to feel an honest connection to her story as a whole.
FTC Disclaimer: BookCrash.com and Crosslink Publishing kindly provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The opinions above are entirely my own.
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