This book was stunning! Wow! Stina has a way with words and she weaves this story together in a way that will make this book hard to put down. While I can't relate to Stina's experience of a spouse leaving the faith, the lessons she's learned about evolving from a more a fundamentalist approach to the faith, the way she connects with women saints through history, and her honesty about church life & seeking is beautiful and relatable to whatever season you're in. I highly recommend.

I picked up this book as someone at a point in her life who is feeling "spiritually single" - not because I am yoked to an unbeliever, or even a deconvert, but because I have not found anyone to yoke to yet. As a single woman in the church, I have been struggling to find my place, to figure out where I fit into my congregation. As the author notes about "pairs and spares," it is very difficult to feel like a "spare" in what is supposed to be one big family. So I did not relate entirely to the author's story, but it resonated deeply with me in a lot of places. I am encouraged by her pursuit of her own spirituality, her own connection to God and to His people, her own search for community and how she found her place. I was reminded afresh of all of the communities to which I belong and all of the places where I have felt welcome, and God even used this book to help to give me a vision for the ministry He's been shaping me for for quite awhile, most intensely in this last season. I am thankful for the author's honesty and authenticity that made this story relatable for someone like me who doesn't connect to all the details but knows well the aching of the heart.

An excellent book club or small group discussion read. A memoir about how our faith grows, sometimes in ways beyond our control. I appreciated the author's ability to find a place among Catholic sisters and American Baptists. If your spouse is an unbeliever, this book holds a gift of a message especially for you.

I thought this book offered an intimate and vulnerable reflection on a mid-life crisis of sorts: the challenge of loving and remaining committed to a partner, and finding a supportive community, even in the midst of great change. This book is about mixed faith marriage, but I thought a lot of it connects really well to other relationships, offering reflections on what it means to love someone who sees the world differently than you do. (And don't we all have relationships like that?)

My only wish for this book is that it didn't end in the middle of the story. I wish the book spanned more time, and that we could find out where the author and her husband find themselves and what they learn in the years to come.

But that's impossible, since the author is still in the middle of the story. In fact, it feels like in many ways, this is just the beginning.



Thanks to IVP and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

This topic is something I wonder about in my own marriage. My husband is agnostic, and has never been sure about God or his beliefs just that something is out there. I was brought up Christian and though have wavered some, still identify as such. I really enjoyed this book and how she tries to reconcile her marriages beliefs at the start to the present. There wasn’t really a resolution just more of her learning and still trying to figure this life out.

In "Blessed Are the Nones", Stina Kielsmeier-Cook writes of her own lived experiences of wrestling between her faith and her newly-non-Christian husband.
This book was beautiful, honest, raw and touching. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves someone-- friend, spouse, partner, family member-- who is of a different faith.

Wow what a powerful and touching story. The book shared a beautiful relationship of people with different faith backgrounds working out living and loving each other. Thank you for sharing this book with the world!

Beautifully written, this spiritual memoir is one of the most brutally honest books on faith I've ever read. The author is of the millenial generation and has dabbled in many faith traditions - Mennonite, Baptist, Episcopal, Anglican, and Catholicism. She is serious about her faith and graduated from evangelical stronghold Wheaton College. So did her husband, until he lost his faith.

The author struggles to hold on to her faith and gamely attempts church attendance by herself and with two small children in tow. It doesn't go well. I appreciated and identified with her struggles to even get the kids dressed on a Sunday morning, along with dealing with potty breaks and misbehavior during church services. She also attempts faith rituals at home, but everybody in the family tunes out.

Finally finding a place for herself in a community of Catholic nuns, the author explores the concept of "spiritual singleness." This concept will likely resonate with many women who attend church alone or without support from their husbands or other family members. Many of us read to know that we are not alone, and this excellent book will reassure those of us standing around awkwardly at the church coffee hour, sitting in the pews distracted by our bored children, or torn between spending Sunday mornings with our husband or attending church.

Highly recommended for anyone who cares about where the church is going in the twenty-first century.

This is both a beautifully written book and a hard story to read. Stina Keilsmeier-Cook is unflinchingly candid about the struggle she finds herself in when her beloved husband admits that he no longer believes in God. She's a brilliant writer - her accounts of wrangling their two children into coats and boots and out through the Minneapolis snow to church on Sundays, all on her own as a "spiritual single," are so vivid, you feel like you're right there with her, longing for another set of hands to help. And yet I found myself longing for more of what her connection to God was like in that season of feeling alone. At times it seemed like her search was more about finding people to talk with about God, more than it was about God. I don't mean that as a criticism, just an observation. The longing for community is palpable, and it's difficult not to be frustrated with her husband for all his decision cost his wife.

The book includes very little of what led to his loss of faith, and that's okay. I appreciate how well she guards his privacy and makes this about her journey, not his. There is one helpful scene in which he tells her about what faith was like for him before: how he could never please God, never do enough, was always striving and failing. Even she admitted he was probably better off without that kind of faith.

Figuring out her own way forward, she discovers a nearby convent. And while she shares very little about the experience of faith internally (I wondered if some of that isn't the sheer exhaustion of raising toddler-age children), it's clear that what she's really looking for is friendship - people willing to seek faith together and talk about spiritual things, now that she can't have these conversations with her husband.

I think this book will be tremendously helpful to anyone struggling with maintaining relationships in the face of faith differences, especially when they're unexpected. Keilsmeier-Cook is a gifted writer, and I hope she'll share more of this story as it unfolds.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.