Trading Places by Les Parrott III, Leslie Parrott (2008, Hardcover)

These authors are very likeable, easy to understand and are good writers. I have always thought their books to be gold but I found this one in the cheap bin (rightfully), so there's perhaps less gold to mine here.

(Spoiler Alert:) Basically, about half way through they finally get to the topic of 'empathy', their 'secret' ingredient to a successful marriage. If you have no counselling books on this topic, then this might be a good one to start off with. However, the authors take quite a while to get to the point and the build-up is melodramatic.

While their pop-psychology is helpful and explained well, this book lacks the biblical foundation that many of their earlier works note. While this is a good self-help book, it lacks any theological basis.

It markets acccess to free online helps, but those helps end up being available to anyone anyway. The thing that is annoying about this otherwise okay marriage counselling course, is the sappy and continual references to eHarmony, their successful match-making ministry. These constant references make this book anticlimatic, like reading the script for an infomercial whose product doesn't really live up to the hype. The self-depricating marketing is quite shameless at times.