Bad Timing: bittersweet love stories and what I learned from them by Ethan Renoe

Bad Timing: bittersweet love stories and what I learned from them Reviews

• 
  Mallory Morgan

  I felt it when I read the New Lonely, and I feel it again as I finish reading Bad Timing. Reading Ethan’s work feels like having a conversation with a kindred spirit, in a way. As I contemplate the work of God and the consequential growth in my own life over the course of these last few years, I feel that I too have had to confront and wrestle through much of what Ethan writes about in Bad Timing.
  The pages of Bad Timing are filled with a multitude of lessons and laughs (I mean, who compares someone they’re interested in, to guacamole? Who would write this sentence – “They would make a biting comment about my awesome Star Wars rat tail, and in retaliation I'd go home and cry…?” In Bad Timing, Ethan does both)! As I revisit the highlights I’ve made throughout reading it, I find myself most appreciating and relating to his following nuggets of wisdom:
  
  - Address the wounds you carry and identify the lies that they’re attached to. ("...so much of the baggage and pain we've been carrying around...only has power when we let it go unaddressed and blindly live as if the lies are true..."). Addressing our wounds, recognizing our thought and behavior patterns, and bringing lies we believe to the surface, while may make us healthy potential romantic partners, more importantly makes us healthy humans in general, and I think that’s really important.
  - Don’t drown in the river of denial (my paraphrase). Ethan writes, “…There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true..." Healing from heartbreak comes from accepting how things play out, even if they don’t make sense. Ethan touches on this, writing, "...the reality is your what-ifs did not become have-beens. Time marched on...things happened how they did, and we can't change that..." This is particularly hard when things in life end ambiguously or without closure – another point that I appreciated Ethan addressing in BT: "...perhaps that's what was so uniquely painful about this ending: it wasn't really an ending. It wasn't chosen by us, nor was there much we could do about it...the decision was made for us. And for that reason, it doesn't feel like there is any closure, like there is a distant cloud of hope hovering just beyond the horizon…"
  - Don’t be a vampire and suck the life out of people (definitely my paraphrase). In short, Ethan quotes, “...you can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you..." At the risk of over-simplifying, Ethan writes about how important it is to be the kind of person you’d want to hang out with. There’s something about that that I appreciate as I continue to navigate community in this season.
  
  In addition to these solid pieces of wisdom, I also appreciated and resonated with Ethan’s thoughts on patience, the need for compatible vision and purpose in a relationship, and the challenge to hold our expectations and hopes loosely and open-handed before God (this feels increasingly relevant as we navigate our 2020 realities). These are not always easy truths to sit with. But they’re necessary. Ethan’s presents them in a thoughtful and heartfelt manner that would resonate with anyone and everyone who decides to pick up this book and with all that being said, I believe this book is well worth the read.
• 
  Gabriella Aspuru

  Was pleasantly surprised by the wisdom and wit that made this book a page turner for me. It was relatable and hilarious.
  
  Made it feel like you were talking to a friend.. made you hopeful for love but also relieved the pressure of Dating stigmas that the church and culture upholds
• 
  Brittany

  Strikingly beautiful language
  
  This guy is a stupidly gifted writer. I could not wait for the next time I had a chance to open up the book again. His stories made me laugh out loud, struck pain in my gut, and adoration in my heart. He shares wisdom and lessons learned. This book gave me hope for dating. This book is my favorite part of October 2020 when I read it.
• 
  Amy

  It was awful. So sorry I wasted my time. Thank goodness it was free. What a narcissist!
  
• 
  Paige Hicks

  This is a really great read! It’s honest, clever, & real. It was hard to put down! Definitely a unique book in the genre of Christian dating that I am now recommending to everyone I know :) I’ve read/heard A LOT of Christian dating advice at this point, and appreciated this so much because it’s coming from the perspective of another single person still in the trenches, vs someone on the other side giving a guide as to how they got there.