Cross Roads by Wm.Paul Young

Published in November 2012, by the Hatchett Book Faith Words, 290 pages by the author of "The Shack" a book I enjoyed.  I cannot say the same for this one, ho hum,  I made it through 117 pages of trite tedious reading, validating why it was 70% off at Books-a-Million this spring.  I thought maybe the author has done it again but by the  20th page, very early on I was disabused of that hope and yawned my way along waiting for the story to evolve.    By the  2nd page I detect that Anthony aka Tony, the main character is a facade, an overly successful businessman who makes friends only to manipulate them and drinks Scotch  as his "over the counter RX."  It is shades of every low budget book around, particularly those  touting  religious aspects, etc.   Tony  suffers a stroke, cerebral hemorrhage, lands in ICU and the story follows a familiar downhill well trodden trail from there as he lingers in a coma, will he live or die?  And the nether-land he experiences waiting is shades of "Saving Ararat" one of the  worst books I've ever read.  He encounters presences, people from the past and new people, and Jesus, the Holy Spirit, all that and begins to sense and see his life.  There are too many good books waiting to be read so I wasted no more time on this, tossed it onto the donate pile.  It is barely a star * and that only for publishing it, better yet for convincing people to spend money on such trivia disguised in spirituality.  A big disappointment and proof that modern authors often  have but one book to write.  *