Redeeming Love

This is an Interesting modern story of Hosea from the Bible. It started out extremely strong. It captured my attention from the first sentence in the prologue. I have several friends who love this book and I have heard about it for years, but never had the courage to read it since it's "Christian Fiction" genre. I don't do Christian Fiction. It's usually cheesy and poorly written. This one, while a little cheesy in parts, is very well written.

It's the story of a man named Michael Hosea who "hears" from God to pursue and marry a prostitute. She eventually marries him, but continues to leave him and go back to her former life.

I thought the book was actually very informative about prostitution and why she would have gone back to it. Reading Hosea is scripture, I always was suspicious if that could actually happen in real life and always leaned more on the side of metaphor. But reading Redeeming Love made me change my mind that it actually could be possible that a woman would want to go back/forced to go back/etc. to the life of prostitution.

I will say this: there are parts that are very cheesy. The dialogue with God is forced and cheesy. I wish she would have toned it down a little. Not to say I don't like prayer or hearing direction from the Lord. But, this was just too blatant and not subtle enough.

It also got old and tedious at about chapter 21 and was a challenge to finish at times. But I think that's part of the point that our running away from God is tedious, old, and oh-here-she-goes-again. That is what makes the story of God's relentless pursing love so beautiful.

It was worth the read though and I'm glad I finally bit the bullet and read it. Now to get the courage for the Mark of the Lion series that is also highly praised by many of my friends.