A fellow writer mentioned this book as the author, and she,
and I were commenting on an FB post. This mutual friend mentioned loving Bethany’s writing
voice, and that intrigued me. So, I was grateful to receive a copy to read for review.
Here’s the summary:
Becoming a Christian
is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to Sarah Hollenbeck. Best
because, well, that's obvious. Worst because, up to this point, she's made her
very comfortable living as a well-known, bestselling author of steamy romance
novels that would leave the members of her new church blushing.
Now Sarah is trying to
reconcile her past with the future she's chosen. She's still under contract
with her publisher and on the hook with her enormous fan base for the kind of
book she's not sure she can write anymore. She's beginning to think that the
church might frown on her tithing on royalties from a "scandalous"
book. And the fact that she's falling in love with her pastor doesn't make
things any easier.
And now, my review:
And now, my review:
First, a note from me: generally, I do not include any
spoilers in my reviews. If you haven’t read the book, consider reading it
before reading my review, because this review is a little different—more like a
one-sided book club discussion, though I still strove to avoid spoilers.
Our mutual writing friend is correct. Bethany (the author)
has a strong writing voice. You’ll feel as if you’ve drifted back a few years
to when Chick Lit was popular. The story is written in first person, but the
tense keeps shifting from past to present. This is rather jarring and may have
been worked out in the editing phase, along with multiple uses of the cliché
“couldn’t/can’t help but.” (I read the ARC—advanced reader copy—version.)
If you’ll take a moment and glance at the summary above,
you’ll notice the MC (main character) begins the story as a writer of steamy
romance novels. Then, she becomes a Christian. This is a great premise for a
book, and it’s what kept me reading. If you’re a writer, you’ll relate to the
writerly side of this story, in some ways. However, there were some unrealistic
elements where publishing was concerned. The MC had zero experience in writing
novels, but she instantly became hugely successful. Also, the MC bragged at
being one to single-handedly revolutionize the CBA book marketplace with her
writing. That hit me as self-serving.
There are some offensive elements at the beginning of the
story, before the MC is born again that had me checking on the name of the
publisher because I couldn’t believe we’d see those elements in a CBA book. I
wonder if they were reworked in the final version. Though those words may have
been in keeping with a non-Christian character, those types of elements almost
deterred me from reading on.
The MC is “falling in love with the pastor,” (see summary), so
wouldn’t she be deeply ashamed of having written erotica? Wouldn’t she feel
disqualified from having a relationship with a pastor and being taken seriously
by his flock and/or his family, and especially himself? She might even feel humiliated
after writing porn. At the very least, apologetic. Instead, her switch to writing a
wholesome genre was treated with lack of believability, as if her erotica publisher,
with whom she was still under contract, would permit a change in genre to
something wholesome and less lucrative. Also, somehow the pastor knows exactly
who she is as a porn writer... The fact that he knew her pen name seemed odd to
me too. Why would he know the names of erotic fiction authors (and still be an
honorable pastor)? And why wouldn't this stand between them? The book’s summary even mentions church members reading
erotica and blushing. There seemed to be an assumption that all Christians read
the type of books she wrote before she got saved, that there was no shame in
that, and that readers would accept that as fact. This struck me as
hard to believe.
The main character is a growing Christian, but we
immediately read Christianese while in her POV, and we don’t get to witness her
character growth/arc. Instead we have lip service about the Christian way to
think. That seemed like another missing element.
Since we’re in first person, we had deep POV potential, but
we were kept at a distance and ended up with some leaps in logic, which were jarring.
There’s a secret in the story and when we learn the answer
we’d been left in the dark so much that we may not care. If there had been
development of the involved party, we might have cared, but as it was, I didn’t
recall mention of the involved person. So, it didn’t impact me.
Overall, the conflict and setup had big potential, but the
follow-through had many missing elements, in my opinion. I respect the author,
but this book (in its ARC form) wasn’t for me. Still, I wish this author and
her publisher the best.
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