I’m so disappointed in this book. I picked up the ebook at Amazon for my Kindle for a few dollars. It was tagged as “Christian Fiction,” and it looked like a nice romance with a supernatural element, just what I want to read.
I got into the book, and found it to be rather well written, with well developed characters and prose that kept the story moving. Then we got to the romance part. I was shocked. WHEW! too steamy for me! This book turned out to be erotica disguised. This is not what I intended to read. I put it down.
But I was attached to the character. I spent some time pondering, wondering what the ending might be. Was the book just porn, where the whole point was the sex? Or did the heroine’s interesting story continue? And what of the ghost?
I decided to peek at the end of the book. On the Kindle, you can’t just fast forward to the end. You have to page through the book. So I skipped through a number of pages blindly, and then read a sentence or two.
To my surprise, the story had resumed. The author was dragging the poor heroine through all kinds of (clean) trials. I skimmed through the book and landed at the end. I had been wrong. It wasn’t a porn book. The author had added the erotica to a good story. The erotica wasn’t essential.
Was it Christian fiction? The faith element wasn’t essential either. There was a character who was a preacher, but he didn’t convert the heroine. The heroine placed her trust in the usual places, not in the Lord.
In short, I’d give this book a single star, if I were reviewing it. It did not live up to my expectations for clean Christian fiction at all. Meanwhile, it has some good reviews on Amazon. Other readers aren’t complaining.
So why did I have such expectations? Because of the Christian fiction label. Who gave it the label? I decided to check the publisher. Turned out it was self-published. It was the author who gave it this misleading label. Lesson learned: to be assured of clean fiction, I will go to the Christian Booksellers Association publishers. I’ll check for the publisher before buying next time.
By the way, I don’t want to give damaging reviews, so I am not telling you what book it is. If you notice that my reviews are basically all positive, that’s because I’ve winnowed out the good ones and am delighted to tell you about them!