Reviews with content warning for Slavery - Redeeming Love

Reviews tagging 'Slavery'

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

19 reviews

mrs_faith_owens's review against another edition

dark emotional inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Redeeming Love is a beautiful story mirroring the story of Hosea from the Bible. While it is very dark and deals with several sexual themes, it is less explicit than most romance written today. Two of the themes that I think were handled very well in this book are religious bigotry and the idea that one’s Savior must be God and not another person. Instead of siding with the judgmental churchgoers, this book focuses on the redemptive power of God. When Angel begins to see Michael as her savior, God pulls her away to find Him. All that being said, this is a fantastic book, but take the content warnings seriously.

Content Warnings

steelepath's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring relaxing sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Redeeming Love

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Historical/Christian Fiction

Spice: N/A, she’s a prostitute so sex is mentioned obviously but no “sex scenes”

Format: 🎧

Review: Wow what a beautiful story. Redeeming Love is a retelling of the book of Hosea from the Bible. If you don’t know, Hosea is a prophet & God tells him to marry a prostitute to demonstrates God’s love for the nation of Israel. God is constantly serving & loving them & yet Israel is constantly turning its back on God. You definitely don’t have to know the Bible or even have read this story to enjoy this book. The author never preaches to you & it’s such a beautiful story even if you’re not a Christian.

The author did an amazing job with this retelling. It’s absolutely heart breaking to learn about Angel’s past & see how she was sold into prostitution as a child. It becomes her identity & it’s hard for her to change. She’s so broken & stone cold. This brought me so much empathy to people who are in prostitution. They may have not chosen that life & were sold into at a young age. They don’t know how to get out or how to do anything different. It’s soo heart breaking. Our hero, Micheal eventually breaks through Angel’s stone coldness, & I just love how well it demonstrates what we do to God. God is always loving us, protecting us, yet we run away & turn our backs on him. It’s such a beautiful love story in the end. I would highly recommend this book. Definitely one of my favorite reads!!

Also please check the trigger warnings if needed!!!

Content Warnings

kierasreadingjournal's review against another edition

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challenging emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

“She destroyed his dreams, and he made her wind chimes.”

I’m going to be completely honest here; I have no idea what to think of this book. I always claim I learn something with every book I read… I look between the lines and see the personal lessons that apply to me as a reader. And while I definitely did learn things with this book, I can’t help but think it could have been so much better executed.

I finished this book in six days. It’s almost 500 pages long.

And while this sounds like it would be a positive, I think the majority of that time was spent searching for and trying to understand the deeper meaning that the author obviously intended.

This story is inspired by the story of Hosea – a story where a God-fearing prophet is told to marry a prostitute who continuously attempts to return to her old ways. It’s designed as an allegory of the relationship between God and His people. (I actually binge-read the whole story last night in an attempt to find any similarities I missed). As such, Hosea is intended to be a representation of God and His love in the story as, I initially assumed, Michal Hosea was to be in Redeeming Love.

And while many people, according to reviews, were able to see God’s love shining out through Michael’s character, I couldn’t see much more than a walking red flag until almost halfway through the book.

And while that may have just been my own fault – my own expectations crumbling around me – that caused that section of the book to be unrelatable and frustrating (and not a few times to think that if I wasn’t already a Christian reading this book, I would want nothing to do with Christianity altogether if it was represented as it was in this story), it still stands to reason that others, knowing the inspiration behind this story, would have gone in with those same expectations.

Surprisingly, even after all that’s said and done, this was the book I was needing at the time.

It came at a perfect season in my life, and while yes, it is full of some less-than-agreeable content and ideology, it still made a positive impact on me and my personal journey.

If only for the quote above and the first time she said his name…

“Michael.”

Content Warnings