Read for: Leisure
Rating: 3.8
I have a love/hate relationship with Redeeming Love. I read it for the first time in October of last year and was deeply moved by it. The story is a fictional retelling of the book of Hosea from the Bible. In Hosea, the prohpet Hosea is told by God to marry a prostitute named Gomer. This real-life example is supposed to be a metaphor for God's unconditional love for Israel, who has been unfaithful to him. Redeeming Love takes place in California in the 1850s, during the Gold Rush. Farmer Michael Hosea is told by God to marry the prostitute Angel. Rivers does a good job of showing the inside of the relationship that Hosea and Gomer might have had. Angel's conversion throughout the book strikes a cord with many Christian women that I know, who identify with her wandering heart and doubt about unconditional love.
With all that good stuff, I have a hard time enjoying this book as much as I should, because Rivers' writing style is so terrible. The dialogue is cheesy and forced, as are the dramatic moments. What bothers me the most, however, is that Rivers only uses one description for smiles. Whenever a character smiles, Rivers makes sure to note it by saying the corners of his or her mouth "curved upward in a smile." Sometimes this even happens in consecutive sentences! On page 385, the last sentence of chapter 29 is "Duke stood before her, his mouth curved in a deadly smile." Turn the page, and the first sentence of chapter 30 is "Duke's mocking gaze swept Angel's soiled gingham dress, his mouth curving into a sardonic smile." There is a difference between repetition and redundancy, and I'm afraid this falls into the category of the latter.
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