Right before Christmas I was contacted by an acquaintance of mine who worked at a now, unfortunately, closed Catholic bookstore. She told me about some free books she had received from Full Quiver Publishing, which is a Catholic publishing company out of Ontario, Canada. Since the bookstore was closing and they wouldn't be able to do anything with the books, she offered them to me.
Now, I have to admit that since getting my Kindle, I'd much rather read a book on that (you know, the novelty and fun of it), but I found myself with some time on my hand late one Sunday afternoon so I picked up the real, live book that was sitting on my shelf and began to read.
The book I chose out of this stack is called "Angela's Song" by AnnMarie Creedon. Let's just say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I finished it about midnight Sunday night. I was so engrossed in it that I was reading snippets while we waited for the second episode of "Sherlock" to load (which, by the way, was my most favorite episode!!).
This is the story of Angela, a woman with three children whose husband was recently killed. It is the story of how she has to examine who she is and what she believes about herself, as well as establish a deep relationship with the God who loves her...all before she can fall in love with a dashing, Italian, near-perfect man named Jack.
I will admit that Jack does seem too perfect, but the more I thought about it, isn't that what makes a romance story romantic? I mean, if you're going to read about a woman and man who fall in love, wouldn't you want the man to be dashing, compassionate, chaste, intelligent and gorgeous? Let's just say that it works in this story.
What I liked the best, though, was that this love story was written from a Catholic perspective. Sometimes the conversations seemed a little too convenient as far as informing about Catholic teaching, but on the whole, it imparts a good picture of how wonderful a truly Catholic relationship could be. Is it always attainable? No, probably not; but why not put the ideal out there for people to strive for? While no relationship is perfect, this book gives you some ideas on how you can head in that direction in your own relationship, all in the context of a sweet love story.
The only downfall is that the author's use of tense seems confusing at times. Most of the time the story is written in the present tense, but then all of a sudden she changes to past tense and it can be distracting.
If you're looking for an easy, thought-provoking, Catholic, fiction read, then I would highly recommend this book to you. I have two more books to get through so I'm hoping that they are just as captivating.
God Bless!
On a side note, I've changed the commenting system on my blog so I'd love to have you give it a run and let me know what you think!
