From Bad to Worse

by Jedd Hafer and Todd Hafer

The truth hurts It's a dangerous mix of freedom, confusion, joy, and attraction as Griffin Smith and his high school crush, Amanda Mac, make their way home from her college in Oregon. Along the way,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1576839702
• ISBN13: 9781576839706
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: NavPress Publishing Group
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.7" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

deep biting character driven story

Teenager Griffin Smith knows he is not in Kansan, the center of the great debate between God vs. coincidence AKA Darwinism. Griff is like most Wheat State residents and probably the brunt of the country thinking not all about whether God or Darwin created the universe. There are more important things in life than worrying whether one has an afterlife or not especially since he is about to begin his second road trip; having barely survived his first with his extended family including the irate coyote he ran over; he still suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. This time the itinerary is to go from his California college to Oregon to pick up his childhood friend and secret love Amanda Mac to take her home with him. However he kicks himself for agreeing to his father's abstinence vow caused by Griff hearing chase when his father said chaste. Amanda Mac is the woman for him though she is unaware of how much he loves her. He also has a secret that he believes will end any chance he has with Amanda Mac, but owes her the truth even as the miles pass without him able to tell her. He knows the family waits for his heroic arrival while he thanks God though he is not sure for what beyond being the modern day teenage Job. The second Griff tale is a deep biting character driven story in which the hero and everyone he knows has issues that believing in God and even worshipping does not mean instant eraser with a prayer. This concept contrasts with recent claims of evangelists who "sinned" but prayed for cleansing and insisted God answered them. Thus the Hafer brothers provide a realistic, often amusing, but always underlying serious spin to being a teen Christian in the modern world. Young adults will appreciate FROM BAD TO WORSE and the equally poignant BAD IDEA. Harriet Klausner

This book ROCKS!!!!!

This book is funnier than Bad Idea Bad Idea: A Novel With Coyotes and it is more suspensful. I loved it and read it straight through in about 4 hours and was wishing for more! From Bad to Worse: A Novel (With Girls) It deals with issues we all deal with, it is real and it is fun.

Killing Me, While Keeping it Real!

When I stumbled into "Bad Idea: A Novel With Coyotes," at Wal-Mart, I stood there and howled. (yeah, I know, the word is LAUGH, but with a name like Wolfe, you HOWL, amen?) Then I put it in the shopping cart, because despite the hype of being for teens, I knew it was for me. And then I found out that there was a follow up, "From Bad to Worse: A Novel With Girls." Oh baby, this is for me too! And I'm already married six years with a beautiful daughter! Now is the time to take a break from college with Griffin Smith, and join him with Amanda Mac on a road trip. So with a title like, "From Bad to Worse," do things automatically get off to a rocky start, starting with chapter 1? I'm not going to tell you! Do things get a little rocky as time goes on? Probably. This has fun, caffeine, as well as a lot of truth packed into this road trip! Through alcoholic bliss, or through a fist fight with the tough guy, this is hard reality for some. And you'll find page after page is literally pregnant with meaning! Some of this was tough. I found myself in some places thinking, "Crap on a cracker, Hafers, EASE UP!" But they couldn't! And you won't want it to get any easier, especially when you know the lesson counts for something. One of my daughter's favorite VeggieTales episodes happens to be "Larry's World of Autotainment," or something to that effect. In the end, Junior sings in song about how he reflects on his day in his bed. The first line is about a great day! And the chorus is all about how God loves him. But that isn't the end of the song. Line number two talks about a day where he did nothing but screw up, didn't do his best, in other words. But you run into that chorus again. "And so, its good to know, how much You love me. Its true, The Bible says you do. You really love me. Your love was with me all throughout my day!" That's all I could think of at the conclusion of this book. Was it a crappy ending? Not at all. All in all, this had to do with giving our best. Being honest, brutally honest, even when the tears can't quit! Sometimes it flat out kills you. Sometimes it makes you tougher then nails! The humor in this was simply icing on the cake. The rest of this simply needs to be told.

Great Teen Fictioni

Griffin Smith is an ordinary guy...with problems. He's escorting his friend, Amanda Mac from the west cost, home to Kansas. He's alone with her, and he's in love, and you can guess what's on his mind. Except he promised his Dad he'd keep himself chaste for the entire trip. Yeah, at first Griffin thought he said chased, which was a bit confusing, but they got that cleared up. So there's Amanda, and they're alone, but a promise is a promise. Griffin has a lot of other problems too. His mother ran off with a man who writes erotic fiction, his dad has a new girlfriend who cheats on him, and his litle brother is so mixed up he physically hurts himself. And then there's God. Sure, he believes in God, he just doesn't have it all figured out. Today's teens deal with a lot of very heavy problems, and being a Christian doesn't protect them from trouble. Sometimes, like Griffin, they get hurt. He's just a normal kid trying to hold his life together, with too many people depending on him. No wonder he feels overwhelmed. But when God said He would be with us, He meant it. A lesson Griffin has to learn. This is a great book for teens. Yes, it deals with some gritty problems, but they're real problems a good many teenagers face today. Realistic, and a very good story.