Raffaella's Reviews > Redemption

What have I just read.
At first sight it could look like the usual sexist trope where the cheating asshole husband gets the doormat back without even trying.
But it was more.
I knew what the book was about because I’ve read (and enjoyed) many reviews of my friends, that made me laugh and made me curious.
Be warned, it’s Christian romance so god is the third main character in the book, or better, he’s THE main character.
The couple has been married for some years, and the book opens with the husband cheating on his wife with his student.
He’s a uni professor. We immediately understand he’s a slimy nematode, the kind that dates his student for one year and falls in love with her hard, then proceeds to having sex with her and lie repeatedly to his wife. He feels just a bit guilty for deceiving his beautiful, virtuous, Christian and faithful wife who waits for him at home believing he’s at some conference while he’s shagging his new piece of ass at her place.
He thinks she’s not only smarter but also hotter than his quiet wife, and his feelings for her are much more intense than those he ever felt for his wife.
But. There’s a but. The piece of ass has a stalker ex who’s not very sane and is actually mad at the professor for stealing his gf.
So he calls the cheaters wife and tells her exactly what and where her husband is doing. And who he is doing.
The poor heroine is shattered and goes to see if it’s true and yes she sees the dirty scumbag at ow house. The asshole doesn’t even follow her and goes back to his weekend of hot sex with the slutty student, then goes back home where he declares he’s in love with ow and wants a divorce.
He’s cold and impervious to the poor heroine’s tears and leaves her to go living with ow.
Even if the heroine was not always present lately she’s always been an affectionate and loyal wife and his behavior is callous and cruel and not justified.
That is where we all readers want him to die a slow and painful death.
Mind my words.
The heroine, as the good Christian she is, refuses to divorce and tells him he has to come back home because they made a vow and they have to carry on with it.
She’s adamant about it and even days and weeks after he’s gone she doesn’t want to give him divorce- not ever.
That is where I started to wonder what was wrong with her.
I mean, even if the husband has been cheating on her for months, told her he doesn’t love her anymore, lied to her, she wants the marriage to go on because god wants it.
Really? Are you serious? How can she be so sure what is god’s will?
Whatever.
The story gets interesting because we find out more about them.
We find out that when she met him she was on the rebound because she had just broken up with the true love of her life, a man who left her to play football as a pro, and she used the hero to forget om.
So no great love at all on the heroine’s part, while the husband was in love with her since he first saw her.
Aaaaaand now, years later, her true love is back in town, just when she’s been dumped by her husband.
So as she tries to get her recalcitrant hubby back and she finds out she’s preggar, she starts seeing om again, finding out she’s still so in love with him, and he of course has always been in love with her.
They talk about what separated them years before but now alas, it’s too late: the heroine wants to candidate herself to the martyr of the year and she wants to go back to her husband that she of course doesn’t love.
The husband eventually understands his mistake and goes back to his wife, that of course, he has always loved while ow was only a middle age crisis.
They go counseling and are happy for some time until ow calls the husband and tells him she’s pregnant too. Of course it’s not true and as soon as he goes to her apartment to tell her he loves his wife and wants only to be with her, the stalker ex shoots him dead.
And the heroine has her daughter while om is there, telling her he will always be there for her.
And of course there’s something of a cliffhanger because the book is the first installment of a series.
What can I say.
There’s a hidden meaning in everything in this book. Nothing is as it seems.
- the hero: is not the husband of course. He’s om.
- the husband is a lowlife of a loser that nobody would like to meet during their life. He’s a coward because he doesn’t even have the guts to tell the truth first to his wife then to his gf. He simply leaves and refuses to give explanations. It’s a wonder that two women, two beautiful and clever women, are attracted to a half man like that. He’s also losing hair. He’s not even rich. The heroine, who’s a model, is richer than him. Really? He’s selfish and unstable. He thinks he loves his gf more than he ever loved his wife, then he has a crisis and becomes an alcoholic and then suddenly he knows he has always loved his wife while ow was only a fling. A real man. So the reader, of course, can’t love this character and all women reading this book wants him to have what he deserves. That is exactly what he gets in the end.
- the hero. He’s too good to be true. A good Christian man, who has always been faithful to the heroine but lost her on a misunderstanding. Really? No. Not exactly. The hero, who has known the heroine since she was 12 and has always wanted to marry her, was selfish too, because he one sided decided that he would go away to play pro football and then he would come back eventually to marry her. When he was ready, when he was free. He thought she would wait forever, without even making a real commitment to her. In another book the heroine would have waited forever and with her virtue intact. Here she meets a nice professor and decides it’s time to move on.
So he loses her and he’s the one to pine for her while she is pregnant with her husband’s child.
- the heroine. Oh the heroine is the most hypocritical person in all Christianity. She’s a saint, she wants her marriage to be perfect and to go on even if neither she nor her husband are in love with each other. Because she is the one who has never loved her husband. She is the one who as soon as she sees the hero, her true love, understands she will love him forever. And she decides she will stay with her cheating husband. Her refusal of divorce is never because she loves her husband but because she want to keep her vows. Even when those vows are empty and no more valid. The impression is that this marriage is based on pride and duty. Not an environment you wish for your children. But the clever author lets us believe that she’s the mistreated wife of a cheating asshole, who thinks she’s a bimbo and so he falls in love with a smarter model. But the heroine is guilty as hell. Her husband was always second best. Not even second.
- other characters are the voice of truth. Her sisters thinks she’s crazy and pathetic and her husband will always cheat on her. And it’s exactly what we readers think. We don’t wish their marriage to go on. We want him punished. Hard. And we want her to marry her true love.
Oh this author. She’s so smart and clever.
She lets us think that the heroine has to suffer and that her choice to stay married to the cheater is the right one, but what does she do?
She does exactly the opposite.
Because in the end the heroine is the real winner and all her men are punished for their sins to her (not to god).
- the hero dies because of his affair with ow, knowing he will never know his daughter and she will very likely grow up with om. And it’s all his fault, because his actions took him exactly there.
-om understand that because of his selfish choices in the past he will have to wait until the heroine recover from her husband’s death and then he will have to raise her late husband’s daughter. His penance. He should have married the heroine as soon as she was of age.
-ow. She loved the cheating husband more than the heroine, that’s for sure. She lost the love of her life because she was a slut and a family wrecker. She deserved it.
- God. He lets us know that the sinners must pay. Always. With interests. And good heroines get all. Even if they make wrong choices, he’s there to correct them. And make it right again.
- if you read the other books of the series you’ll know h/H eventually marry and live happily.
- I’ve enjoyed this book so much, so subtle and yet hidden in plain sight. It’s not bigot as you may think. And the heroine takes it all.
- I don’t feel any angst because the heroine’s choice is sensible and she’s not in love with her husband at all. At. All. No matter what the author says. If you read carefully you can see she loved om all the time. Her hurt is because she failed to have a perfect marriage, not because she lost the man she loved. He was a filler.
This is a story behind a story.
But I liked because it is very original.