Excellent Christian Fiction on Wattpad

The Christian Girl by 'jenni'

The Christian Girl, by @Dino_Chick, aka 'jenni', is a story that explores the life of a high-school aged Christian girl who is being bullied. Since the author gives her age as 17, we need to read the story with our 'kind and encouraging' hats on— the author is not a 47 year old writing veteran and we shouldn't expect her to write like one. Yet.

The main character of the story, Katy Woodland, is a high school freshman who is dedicated to Jesus and attends an evangelical church. She is tormented by a girl who spouts juvenile atheist slogans at her, but Katy responds as a Christian girl should— with prayer, trust in the Lord, and a lot of turning the other cheek. Katy even tries rather consistently to be sympathetic to her tormenter, and prays for her conversion.

Katy goes through some tough times because of the bullying, but never loses faith. In time, her faith is rewarded when her prayers are answered— her bully accepts her invitation to go to her church and gives her life to Jesus. A happy ending all around.

This story is completed and has won many approving comments, particularly I would imagine from teen readers of the Evangelical Christian faith who have experienced similar bullying. I think the story will do a great deal of good for these readers. 'jenni' has done a great job.

Now for a little constructive criticism: our main character, Katy, is so good about turning her pain in being bullied over to Jesus, turning the other cheek, and praying that some readers may well jump to the conclusion that Katy is too 'goody-goody' to be real. The high level of prayer-and-faith content, higher than one sees in Christian fiction from mainstream publishers, might have to be toned down a bit if 'jenni' ever revises the story to submit to publishers. Or, on the other hand, if 'jenni' were to add more content about how Katy doesn't have such an easy time turning the other cheek all the time, or gets tired of being perfectly 'Christian,' even in thought, and finds herself wanting her bully to get what's coming to her, that might work as well as omitting some of the faith-content.

But the story is quite good for the work of a young author, just as it currently stands, and I look forward to seeing more work by this author in the future. On the issue of bullying: I would like to mention that if any reader of this review is experiencing real-world bullying, that you pray, but also take practical steps to deal with the situation. You can report bullying incidents to a trusted teacher at your school. You can document a bullying incident by having a friend as witness, or by taking a video of the incident on a cell phone. Remember that your bully may be having serious problems in his or her life, and reporting bullying incidents isn't being mean, it might be what helps get your bully into counseling, to get needed mental health help.