A great book for a VERY niche audience (of which I am not technically a part).

The title of this book is a bit misleading, so let’s spend this review focusing on what exactly this book is and is not.

It is not:

A crash course on how to go about practicing Natural Family Planning (widely misunderstood to be “the rhythm method”) in accordance with Catholic teaching. NFP is generally used to avoid pregnancies. I suppose you could technically use it to achieve one, but most often when you’re talking about NFP you’re talking about using it to space pregnancies. This is not my situation at all: I’ve more or less spent the last five years of my life trying to conceive, with one successful pregnancy and one miscarriage, so avoiding pregnancy is just about the farthest thing from my mind. However, I’m a practicing Catholic and I find that Catholic teachings on contraception, family size, and sex in general are so incredibly misunderstood. I don’t think I do my faith any justice by fumbling my explanation if someone wants to know more, so even though I’m not using NFP myself, I make it my business to understand the issues surrounding it. This book basically doesn’t even touch on how to actually practice NFP.
A justification of the Church’s teachings. It’s not written to convert people.

It is:

A humorous but not flippant pep talk for couples who already want to adhere to NFP and are struggling.
A surprisingly thought-provoking little book. It kind of reminded me of one of my favorite parts of Catholicism: I found so much to think about from this book, from marriage to sex to the things I’m teaching my daughter, because to me, the Church is a living body and when you poke one part of it, you’re poking the whole thing. You read about one aspect of the theology, and you can see exactly how the way of thinking ties in with all the rest of it. Honestly, I’ve been struggling with my faith in the last year or so, and this was a well-timed book that really reminded me of why Catholicism is so important to me. Not too shabby, considering this is a book about NFP and I’m not even practicing NFP. I imagine it would be a treasure trove to its target audience.