Daddy Dates by Greg Wright

I recently recieved a copy of Daddy Dates by Greg Wright. Even though I am the mom of a son, I was hopeful that I could maybe reverse engineer some of the tips in the book to apply to myself and my son. I probably can, although there's some information in there that likely won't apply.

Greg Wright is a motivational speaker from Austin, Texas, and as a young dad of four daughters, was seeking out something alot of dads of daughters don't really seek out - he wanted to get to know his daughters. Not just know that they existed, but KNOW them. So he decided to employ a secret skill, and take each of his daughters on a date, giving them all individual time and attention, just them and dad. Daddy Dates is in equal measure an instruction manual, and autobiography.

It is, also, 100% a book a dad would write. Which is to say, it's in equal parts incredibly nerdy and incredibly charming. Wright has an easy, light writing style, and admits several times over the course of the book that he's by no means an expert, just a guy that had an idea.

If you twisted my arm and told me I had to tell you something bad about Daddy Dates, it would be that no one seemed especially sure what Daddy Dates was supposed to be. The first third of the book read like a text from one of Wright's speeches. The second third read like an instructional manual (despite mentioning several times over that that was not what the book was intended to be), and the last third, by which time the copy editor for the book was clearly not paying attention, read simply like that journal, just a guy trying to get his thoughts out on paper. Any style would have been fine, and made for an excellent light, informative read, but to switch between the three and so wildly change the tone was a bit distracting.

In my opening paragraph, I mentioned that I thought there was some information in the book that as a mother of a son, I couldn't use. Namely, the rings - Wright says in the book that he gave each of his daughters a ring, as a symbol of the closeness of their relationship and how they would wear their rings until they got married. I can't fathom any boy agreeing to that tactic.

Wright also recommends not attempting to date your daughters until they are older, but then later gives ideas for dating younger kids (even mentioning four year olds in particular), which is part of the change in tone in the book that I mentioned.

I would recommend Daddy Dates to any male friends with daughters (I'm actually considering sharing my copy with my brother in law), but beyond that fairly niche reading circle, I'm not sure I'd recommend the book to other readers.