If I'd Only Known

By Edee Wilcox

A teenager's struggle with acceptance, sex, and Christian values. Fifteen-year-old Maggie Bishop is on top of the world. She's a cheerleader. She dates the most popular guy in school. Then, she... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591133041
• ISBN13: 9781591133049
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Booklocker.Com Inc
• Length: 171 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Tool for Both Parents and Teens

If I'd Only Known is a Christian young adult novel told through the eyes of fifteen-year-old tenth grader Maggie Bishop. Maggie is a popular cheerleader whose parents have just started letting her date and she begins dating the most popular senior in school. Soon Maggie starts feeling the pressures and decisions involved with dating and the curiosities of sex. It seems everywhere she looks she sees fellow students that have had sex so Maggie must face the decision of whether it's really worth it. Wilcox smartly covers all of the hard topics that teens face everyday. If I'd Only Known touches base on drugs and alcohol, sexually active teens, teen pregnancy, abstinence, peer pressure and gossip. It all begins to take a toll on Maggie, her reputation and her relationships with her friends, parents and boyfriend. While If I'd Only Known is a Christian-based novel, the religious morals of the story are peppered in smoothly and not overbearingly making this story likeable to any reader interested in young adult and teen stories. It is well-written and a useful tool for teens facing these pressures and in dealing with opening up to a parent for help or counsel.

Move Over Judy Blume

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of This is the Place and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered So many Christian writers get so caught up in espousing good, old-fashioned values that they forget that fiction is about story-telling. The author of "If I'd Only Known...", Edee Wilcox, is not one of those writers. At first it is not evident that his book was written for a Christian audience, or, perhaps, for a lapsed Christian audience. Religion doesn't seem to be an issue for the protagonist, a 10th grader with popularity on her side but little self-confidence to go with it. Her problems do not seem to be earth-shaking, but the usual 15-year-old stuff; she and her mother tend to fall into patterns quite prevalent in today's culture. Disaster, of course, is the result and, in the tradition of Judy Blume, Wilcox does not shirk from describing the results of these failings honestly. That our heroine gets off lightly bothers me. "If I'd Only Known..." would have benefited from a parallel story about a young girl who was not so lucky, perhaps one whose parents were not open to honest communication and who suffers for it. Still, this book is a page-turner, one that most parents would want their daughters to read. It is also one that a young girl will enjoy reading. That is a battle hard-won in its genre and gratefully so. (Carolyn Howard-Johnson's coming-of-age story, This is the Place, has won eight awards. It is about a young journalist in the 50s who must find the courage to live her own life.)