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sandraagee 's review for:
When Calls the Heart
by Janette Oke
I had to read this book for our week on Christian fiction for my grown-up books class. And the reason why I didn't like this book wasn't because it was Christian fiction, as I had expected. I actually thought that the spiritual/religious part was pretty tastefull and not overly preachy. Cheesy at parts, but tolerable. Not that I have a problem with religion or anything (I don't at all), but I just don't like being preached to and feeling like fictional characters are morally superior to me because they constantly talk about religion, which I think (admittedly, stereotypically) often happens in these kinds of books. But I could handle it here.
The problem is that the writing is pretty terrible. It's an interesting enough premise and there are sections of the story that are nice. But it's just not pulled together very well. I had been hoping that the romantic tension - what the summary on the back builds up to be at the center of the story - would keep things interesting, but Elizabeth and Wynn's motives and their resulting actions just didn't add up in my mind, and I just have a hard time believing that it can all culminate in a "I'm-going-back-East/Please-don't-leave-me" scene like we got in the final chapters. Elizabeth's frontier life was more interesting than the romance, which was what really disappointed me in the end.
The problem is that the writing is pretty terrible. It's an interesting enough premise and there are sections of the story that are nice. But it's just not pulled together very well. I had been hoping that the romantic tension - what the summary on the back builds up to be at the center of the story - would keep things interesting, but Elizabeth and Wynn's motives and their resulting actions just didn't add up in my mind, and I just have a hard time believing that it can all culminate in a "I'm-going-back-East/Please-don't-leave-me" scene like we got in the final chapters. Elizabeth's frontier life was more interesting than the romance, which was what really disappointed me in the end.