What do you think?
Rate this book
Hosea's Bride
Though her sins were like scarlet . . .
Forced into prostitution by her stepfather, Angela Warren found salvation one terrifying night in Crossroads Church. The words of a handsome visiting preacher and the strength she found in the Lord led her to a new life in Harmony, Colorado.
Could she wear a white veil?
But Angela's hard-won happiness was threatened when her church appointed a new pastor, Hosea Stevens -- the very preacher who'd saved her years ago. Angela tried to avoid him, lest he recognize her, but Hosea persisted in knowing her better. Panicked by his romantic interest -- and her own feelings -- Angela fled, but Hosea pursued her. Could he bring her back to his church . . .as his bride?
Forced into prostitution by her stepfather, Angela Warren found salvation one terrifying night in Crossroads Church. The words of a handsome visiting preacher and the strength she found in the Lord led her to a new life in Harmony, Colorado.
Could she wear a white veil?
But Angela's hard-won happiness was threatened when her church appointed a new pastor, Hosea Stevens -- the very preacher who'd saved her years ago. Angela tried to avoid him, lest he recognize her, but Hosea persisted in knowing her better. Panicked by his romantic interest -- and her own feelings -- Angela fled, but Hosea pursued her. Could he bring her back to his church . . .as his bride?
250 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
7 people are currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Clark
55 books87 followersMarried to her own personal hero for over fifty-eight years, mother of three, grandmother of four, and great-grandmother to a beautiful baby girl, Dorothy calls on her life’s experiences—including designing and helping her husband build their home, complete with beams they hewed by hand and a real, old-fashioned walk-in kitchen fireplace she occasionally cooks in, to add color and depth to her stories. But, while she still knows how to clean used bricks, mix mortar and swing a mean hammer, she now only designs homes for the characters in her books. An antique lover, she fills those homes (and her own) with furnishings appropriate to the time.
When she is not busy writing, Dorothy enjoys visiting with family—who live much too far away—and traveling with her husband throughout the United States doing research for future books. She values her American heritage and believes in God, love, family and happy endings, which explains why she feels so at home writing Christian historical romance.
When she is not busy writing, Dorothy enjoys visiting with family—who live much too far away—and traveling with her husband throughout the United States doing research for future books. She values her American heritage and believes in God, love, family and happy endings, which explains why she feels so at home writing Christian historical romance.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
February 10, 2019
Reviewed for THC Reviews
"3.5 stars" I’ve had Hosea’s Bride on my TBR list for quite some time. It came to my attention, because it has a similar theme as Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love, which I read many years ago and recall thoroughly enjoying. For that reason, I had high hopes for this book and was looking forward to giving it a try, but it ended up being something of a let-down. It’s a sweet story, but I felt like it was lacking in substance and the characterizations were rather weak. The first romances I ever read way back in my teens were inspirationals. Over the years, I moved away from them as I discovered more exciting romantic books, but I still like to occasionally revisit the genre. However, I have a hit and miss relationship with it. There are some books that I’ve really enjoyed and consider to be keepers, while others just don’t quite make the cut. One of the biggest issues I’ve had with inspirationals is the way in which the faith message is presented. I’ve read ones that were far more irritatingly preachy than this one, but I have a feeling the only reason it wasn’t is because both characters are already Christians. It does, however, contain a number of pithy platitudes that just don’t work well for me, as well as leaving the reader with the impression that, if you simply pray hard enough, everything will work out perfectly. My life’s experience is far different than this, so that type of message simply doesn’t resonate with me. If you’re the type of reader who believes that God orchestrates every tiny little thing in our lives and will magically give us all the answers if we pray fervently for them, then you’ll probably find this book to be the cat’s meow. But for me it fell a little short.
Angela was forced into prostitution by her mother and step-father at a very young age to pay for their drug habit, and was later sold to a pimp. As she was trying to escape her pimp and was looking for a place to hide, she opened a door and accidentally ended up in a church. It was there, on that very night, that she found God and completely turned her life around, because of the words of a handsome young visiting preacher. After that, she moved from the city to a smaller town, where she’s reinvented herself. She now has a successful career as a researcher and is very active in her church. She thought she’d left her old life far behind, but then one day, a new minister comes to take over the church, and he’s none other than the same one who was there that night when she got saved. Now Angela fears he may recognize her. Although she longs for a husband and family of her own, she doesn’t believe she’s worthy of those things because of her past. Not to mention, she harbors some distrust of men in general because of how she was used and abused by them. So when she starts having feelings for Hosea, she decides to run away, thinking that her past will only taint him if she allows herself to get closer.
Angela is a kind, compassionate young woman, who is always looking out for others, whether it’s a teenage girl in need, the elderly in a local nursing home, her best friend, or the church, and she’s happy to lend a helping hand wherever it’s needed. Overall, Angela is a pretty good heroine, but where I took issue with her characterization is that the author chooses to hold back all the information about her life as a prostitute that would have made me empathize with her and relate to her more, not revealing any of this until the final pages of the book. In some ways, I could understand her feelings of unworthiness, but because I never got a good sense of how the past was affecting her in the present, I felt like her sense of shame over it was belabored, especially since she’d been forced to do it and had no real control over any of it. Most of the story is merely spent with her either being terrified that Hosea is going to figure out who she is, or her repeatedly thinking how she can’t be with him when her feelings for him begin to surface. She never even considers the idea of simply telling him the truth and letting him decide for himself whether he wants to be with her. Then after her running away and praying and soul-searching for a month, yet not really finding the answers she was looking for, all her fears and doubts magically disappear with just one conversation and a brief prayer, which was a little too much to be believable.
Hosea gave up a million-dollar career in baseball to become a minister. He’s a very sweet, kind hero, who is pretty gentle with his entire flock, including Angela. Even though she looks different after all these years, he knows from the moment he sees her that she’s the former prostitute he prayed with on that night long ago. As he begins to have feelings for her, he isn’t certain at first if he should pursue those feelings, but after praying, it doesn’t take long to get an affirmative answer. But every time he tries to draw a little closer to Angela, she seems uncomfortable. Then after her best friend’s wedding, she skips town and no one seems to know where she is. I love a good beta hero, and for that reason, I liked Hosea. But I also like heroes in pursuit who are proactive about expressing their feelings. Sometimes, I felt like he was being a bit too passive, merely praying for Angela without backing it up with actions. At the very end, after she’s been gone for a month, he finally – and rather inexplicably – gets the idea to search through church records to see if he can find a clue as to where she might have gone. Then, in another one of those magical occurrences, he simply knows when he hears the name of a mountain retreat that that’s where she is and finally goes after her. Overall, Hosea was a pretty good hero, but there was one little thing he did at the very end that tweaked me a little. When he finds Angela and declares his feelings and his desire to marry her, she of course objects on the grounds that a minister can’t marry an ex-prostitute. His response is to prepare to leave while telling her he has no problem marrying an ex-prostitute, but he can’t marry someone who doesn’t believe in God’s redemptive power. I reluctantly admit that it served to give her a wake-up call, but I thought the harshness of it was a little out of character for him and that he could have been more tactful in his delivery.
In addition to the issues I had with the characterizations, I also had some trouble with the way in which the romance develops. I know that inspirationals have a reputation for being squeaky clean, but I felt like this one took it to a whole new level. I had a hard time feeling any building emotion between Hosea and Angela, because I felt like it was being more told to me than shown. They end up at the point where they’re in love with one another and Hosea is sure he wants to marry Angela, yet they’ve spent very little time alone together, never been on a proper date, and haven’t even kissed. In fact, they don’t kiss at all until the final page of the main story (minus the epilogue), and then that kiss somehow magically wipes away all of Angela’s fears with regards to men, which again was a little hard to believe.
Overall, I guess the bottom line is that true fans of inspirationals who enjoy this type of storytelling will probably eat it up. I, on the other hand, was pretty skeptical of the fantastical nature of some of the elements of the story. It all just left me with a rather unsatisfied feeling in the end. On the up side, the writing itself was pretty good. The author uses some good descriptions and is very good at blocking her scenes. The only small issue I had is that much of the dialogue seemed a bit formal for a contemporary story. There’s lots of uses of formal titles like Mr., Mrs., Miss, Pastor, etc. If this was written in the 1970s of something, this might make sense, but it was written in 2004, and over the past few decades forms of address have become more informal in most settings. More contractions in her dialogue would have helped, too, as well as cutting down on the use of peoples’ names in dialogue. Otherwise, Hosea’s Bride is a very readable book and I found some enjoyment in parts of it. However, it simply didn’t satisfy the part of me that wanted a deeper exploration of a young woman who’d been though something very traumatic and was trying to put her life back together to find genuine happiness.
"3.5 stars" I’ve had Hosea’s Bride on my TBR list for quite some time. It came to my attention, because it has a similar theme as Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love, which I read many years ago and recall thoroughly enjoying. For that reason, I had high hopes for this book and was looking forward to giving it a try, but it ended up being something of a let-down. It’s a sweet story, but I felt like it was lacking in substance and the characterizations were rather weak. The first romances I ever read way back in my teens were inspirationals. Over the years, I moved away from them as I discovered more exciting romantic books, but I still like to occasionally revisit the genre. However, I have a hit and miss relationship with it. There are some books that I’ve really enjoyed and consider to be keepers, while others just don’t quite make the cut. One of the biggest issues I’ve had with inspirationals is the way in which the faith message is presented. I’ve read ones that were far more irritatingly preachy than this one, but I have a feeling the only reason it wasn’t is because both characters are already Christians. It does, however, contain a number of pithy platitudes that just don’t work well for me, as well as leaving the reader with the impression that, if you simply pray hard enough, everything will work out perfectly. My life’s experience is far different than this, so that type of message simply doesn’t resonate with me. If you’re the type of reader who believes that God orchestrates every tiny little thing in our lives and will magically give us all the answers if we pray fervently for them, then you’ll probably find this book to be the cat’s meow. But for me it fell a little short.
Angela was forced into prostitution by her mother and step-father at a very young age to pay for their drug habit, and was later sold to a pimp. As she was trying to escape her pimp and was looking for a place to hide, she opened a door and accidentally ended up in a church. It was there, on that very night, that she found God and completely turned her life around, because of the words of a handsome young visiting preacher. After that, she moved from the city to a smaller town, where she’s reinvented herself. She now has a successful career as a researcher and is very active in her church. She thought she’d left her old life far behind, but then one day, a new minister comes to take over the church, and he’s none other than the same one who was there that night when she got saved. Now Angela fears he may recognize her. Although she longs for a husband and family of her own, she doesn’t believe she’s worthy of those things because of her past. Not to mention, she harbors some distrust of men in general because of how she was used and abused by them. So when she starts having feelings for Hosea, she decides to run away, thinking that her past will only taint him if she allows herself to get closer.
Angela is a kind, compassionate young woman, who is always looking out for others, whether it’s a teenage girl in need, the elderly in a local nursing home, her best friend, or the church, and she’s happy to lend a helping hand wherever it’s needed. Overall, Angela is a pretty good heroine, but where I took issue with her characterization is that the author chooses to hold back all the information about her life as a prostitute that would have made me empathize with her and relate to her more, not revealing any of this until the final pages of the book. In some ways, I could understand her feelings of unworthiness, but because I never got a good sense of how the past was affecting her in the present, I felt like her sense of shame over it was belabored, especially since she’d been forced to do it and had no real control over any of it. Most of the story is merely spent with her either being terrified that Hosea is going to figure out who she is, or her repeatedly thinking how she can’t be with him when her feelings for him begin to surface. She never even considers the idea of simply telling him the truth and letting him decide for himself whether he wants to be with her. Then after her running away and praying and soul-searching for a month, yet not really finding the answers she was looking for, all her fears and doubts magically disappear with just one conversation and a brief prayer, which was a little too much to be believable.
Hosea gave up a million-dollar career in baseball to become a minister. He’s a very sweet, kind hero, who is pretty gentle with his entire flock, including Angela. Even though she looks different after all these years, he knows from the moment he sees her that she’s the former prostitute he prayed with on that night long ago. As he begins to have feelings for her, he isn’t certain at first if he should pursue those feelings, but after praying, it doesn’t take long to get an affirmative answer. But every time he tries to draw a little closer to Angela, she seems uncomfortable. Then after her best friend’s wedding, she skips town and no one seems to know where she is. I love a good beta hero, and for that reason, I liked Hosea. But I also like heroes in pursuit who are proactive about expressing their feelings. Sometimes, I felt like he was being a bit too passive, merely praying for Angela without backing it up with actions. At the very end, after she’s been gone for a month, he finally – and rather inexplicably – gets the idea to search through church records to see if he can find a clue as to where she might have gone. Then, in another one of those magical occurrences, he simply knows when he hears the name of a mountain retreat that that’s where she is and finally goes after her. Overall, Hosea was a pretty good hero, but there was one little thing he did at the very end that tweaked me a little. When he finds Angela and declares his feelings and his desire to marry her, she of course objects on the grounds that a minister can’t marry an ex-prostitute. His response is to prepare to leave while telling her he has no problem marrying an ex-prostitute, but he can’t marry someone who doesn’t believe in God’s redemptive power. I reluctantly admit that it served to give her a wake-up call, but I thought the harshness of it was a little out of character for him and that he could have been more tactful in his delivery.
In addition to the issues I had with the characterizations, I also had some trouble with the way in which the romance develops. I know that inspirationals have a reputation for being squeaky clean, but I felt like this one took it to a whole new level. I had a hard time feeling any building emotion between Hosea and Angela, because I felt like it was being more told to me than shown. They end up at the point where they’re in love with one another and Hosea is sure he wants to marry Angela, yet they’ve spent very little time alone together, never been on a proper date, and haven’t even kissed. In fact, they don’t kiss at all until the final page of the main story (minus the epilogue), and then that kiss somehow magically wipes away all of Angela’s fears with regards to men, which again was a little hard to believe.
Overall, I guess the bottom line is that true fans of inspirationals who enjoy this type of storytelling will probably eat it up. I, on the other hand, was pretty skeptical of the fantastical nature of some of the elements of the story. It all just left me with a rather unsatisfied feeling in the end. On the up side, the writing itself was pretty good. The author uses some good descriptions and is very good at blocking her scenes. The only small issue I had is that much of the dialogue seemed a bit formal for a contemporary story. There’s lots of uses of formal titles like Mr., Mrs., Miss, Pastor, etc. If this was written in the 1970s of something, this might make sense, but it was written in 2004, and over the past few decades forms of address have become more informal in most settings. More contractions in her dialogue would have helped, too, as well as cutting down on the use of peoples’ names in dialogue. Otherwise, Hosea’s Bride is a very readable book and I found some enjoyment in parts of it. However, it simply didn’t satisfy the part of me that wanted a deeper exploration of a young woman who’d been though something very traumatic and was trying to put her life back together to find genuine happiness.
November 20, 2013
Excellent read! Sometimes it's hard to believe God has our best interests at heart and that He'll bless us. Guilt makes us believe we've been so horrible that we don't deserve what God desires to give us. Forgiving ourselves can seem impossible.
Pastor Hosea Stevens meets a young woman running away from a bad past. Six years later they meet again. For much of the story Angela tries hard to hide her past from Hosea, and she's cautious with her heart. When the past scars us, we tend to close our hearts to people who matter to us. God has a way of working out those problems.
Pastor Hosea Stevens meets a young woman running away from a bad past. Six years later they meet again. For much of the story Angela tries hard to hide her past from Hosea, and she's cautious with her heart. When the past scars us, we tend to close our hearts to people who matter to us. God has a way of working out those problems.
September 7, 2008
Best book I've read in a while! The layout was nice, there was suspense. I likes the characterization and the emotional scenes throughout the whole book. Plus the real-life problems it showed.
October 23, 2013
I can't decide if I like this book or not. I liked parts of it but really didn't like other parts of it. I wish that Hosea had just told Angela that he remembered who she was. It seems like Angela went through a lot of pain and suffering that could have been easily avoided if Hosea had just told her he remembered her. I didn't really see how God was saying that Hosea shouldn't tell her. I also feel like the way Angela just walked away from her friend's wedding reception without was ridiculous. The bride would have noticed especially considering how close they were. The story just didn't gel well with me but I appreciate the original storyline premise of this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 11, 2014
This book was a little cheesy, I'll admit that. But I couldn't help but love it! I got frustrated with Angela often because the solution to her problems seemed so obvious to me! But I still rooted for her to figure it out in the end. It was obvious even from the title that she and Hosea would end up together, but it was fun seeing how that happened. Leigh and Phil provided some fun comic relief. Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot for just some light reading!
August 17, 2009
Incredible book about the healing power of love and acceptance. The heroine had a terrible life before she met the hero. And instead of judging her, he opens his heart to her and makes her his bride, giving her the love and care she always needed.
March 28, 2021
It's a bit better than most Love Inspired titles--at least it had some Christian lessons in it that different characters had to learn. I don't know if I've read anything by this author before. A friend sent me this book in a box of books, but when I started it, it hardly seemed like it had been read before.
WARNING: REMAINDER OF REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ ON AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION
****
Likes:
The church's response to Gelina's decision.
The lady who helped Gelina asking Gelina to pay it forward rather than taking money.
Angela's choices made to pay the good deed forward: helping a shelter, visiting the elderly and buying items for them, helping Cathy to attend college and get out of a bad situation.
Hosea's response to Angela's past. It's nice to know there are people out there who can hate the sin but love the sinner, who can walk the "God makes everything new and clean" talk.
Cathy's making the most of the chance offered to her. The church's response to Cathy's plight. (I do wonder what happened to or became of her father--I wonder if he will show up in another book? I hope he finds salvation somewhere along the way.)
Cathy paying the good deeds shown to her forward by being a friend to Diana and even staying over the Christmas holiday at school with her.
Frank and Greta--nice caretaker, grandparent/parent figures.
That many characters see and think that God is working in their lives: Hosea recognizes it in his life and counsels Leigh in it, Angela wonders if God is trying to prevent her from calling a realtor.
Seeing Hosea struggle--pastors aren't immune to the struggles the rest of us humans have. Also seeing Hosea turn to his parents (believers) and to God for counsel.
The lessons characters learn throughout the story.
Dislikes:
Angela's resolution to her mental struggle occurs abruptly. After all the wrestling with it that she did, I have a hard time believing that a short conversation resolves it for her.
Hosea's response to Angela's past: while I like his response overall, it's not the norm to a situation like that. I wonder, did he struggle with it in the years between his guest preaching stint and his acceptance of the pastor position in Harmony, Colorado? Because if his only struggle with it is what's portrayed in this book, then I'm not sure how realistic the struggle is/was.
I didn't get the leap of logic that allows Hosea, Leigh and Phil to connect Cathy's comment about the cabins with where Angela would have gone when she fled Harmony.
WARNING: REMAINDER OF REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ ON AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION
****
Likes:
The church's response to Gelina's decision.
The lady who helped Gelina asking Gelina to pay it forward rather than taking money.
Angela's choices made to pay the good deed forward: helping a shelter, visiting the elderly and buying items for them, helping Cathy to attend college and get out of a bad situation.
Hosea's response to Angela's past. It's nice to know there are people out there who can hate the sin but love the sinner, who can walk the "God makes everything new and clean" talk.
Cathy's making the most of the chance offered to her. The church's response to Cathy's plight. (I do wonder what happened to or became of her father--I wonder if he will show up in another book? I hope he finds salvation somewhere along the way.)
Cathy paying the good deeds shown to her forward by being a friend to Diana and even staying over the Christmas holiday at school with her.
Frank and Greta--nice caretaker, grandparent/parent figures.
That many characters see and think that God is working in their lives: Hosea recognizes it in his life and counsels Leigh in it, Angela wonders if God is trying to prevent her from calling a realtor.
Seeing Hosea struggle--pastors aren't immune to the struggles the rest of us humans have. Also seeing Hosea turn to his parents (believers) and to God for counsel.
The lessons characters learn throughout the story.
Dislikes:
Angela's resolution to her mental struggle occurs abruptly. After all the wrestling with it that she did, I have a hard time believing that a short conversation resolves it for her.
Hosea's response to Angela's past: while I like his response overall, it's not the norm to a situation like that. I wonder, did he struggle with it in the years between his guest preaching stint and his acceptance of the pastor position in Harmony, Colorado? Because if his only struggle with it is what's portrayed in this book, then I'm not sure how realistic the struggle is/was.
I didn't get the leap of logic that allows Hosea, Leigh and Phil to connect Cathy's comment about the cabins with where Angela would have gone when she fled Harmony.
January 31, 2025
The story was amazing! It was the writing and partly story telling that threw me off.
I like to imagine it in my head as though i were there, feeling as they do, seeing as they do. But when the story skips key pieces, going out of sequential order. such as, "Tears make streaks down her cheeks." During which the woman was facing a man. Then suddenly "She moves things around movingly toward the stage." Which is facing away from him. So, where my mind immediately had pictured him seeing her cry, suddenly in the next few sentences, that was proven not to be the case. Why one couldn't just write "She turned away to hide her tears. Streaking down her face as she moved to rearrange items." Just write it in order of events. I imagine the only reason it wasn't written this way on purpose would be for the "cliff hanger" effect. But, that effect gets awfully old quick when you are constantly having to rewrite the image in your mind to fit the story telling.
The other piece that had me rethink keeping this book was a move made/not made by both characters towards the end of the book. I believe that it was a sudden change of characteristic for them both, seemingly made in that way as to fit the ending they wish to set it with. Even though they had many other options to chose from. A character personality break is enough to kill the book entirely for me, and happening right at the end made what was a "happy ending" more of a disappointment to me.
I like to imagine it in my head as though i were there, feeling as they do, seeing as they do. But when the story skips key pieces, going out of sequential order. such as, "Tears make streaks down her cheeks." During which the woman was facing a man. Then suddenly "She moves things around movingly toward the stage." Which is facing away from him. So, where my mind immediately had pictured him seeing her cry, suddenly in the next few sentences, that was proven not to be the case. Why one couldn't just write "She turned away to hide her tears. Streaking down her face as she moved to rearrange items." Just write it in order of events. I imagine the only reason it wasn't written this way on purpose would be for the "cliff hanger" effect. But, that effect gets awfully old quick when you are constantly having to rewrite the image in your mind to fit the story telling.
The other piece that had me rethink keeping this book was a move made/not made by both characters towards the end of the book. I believe that it was a sudden change of characteristic for them both, seemingly made in that way as to fit the ending they wish to set it with. Even though they had many other options to chose from. A character personality break is enough to kill the book entirely for me, and happening right at the end made what was a "happy ending" more of a disappointment to me.
January 24, 2018
Christian fiction about a young woman whose parent are drug addicts, and is forced into prostitution to support their habit. She is then sold to a pimp (by the parents for drugs) , but manages to escape and takes refuge in a church. She is invited into the sanctuary and is compelled to go forward and give herself over to the Lord. At this point you would thinks that the story would be over but it's not. The rest of the story is a compelling essay on not just being saved, but truly accepting salvation. A good Christian read.
January 14, 2019
Dorothy Clark did a wonderful job of bringing her characters to life in her book Hosea’s Bride. They were likable and believable. I could feel the pain Angela, one of the main characters, was feeling throughout most of the book. The male lead, Hosea, was just plain lovable.
I was needing a light and easy read and this book was perfect for that. I enjoy different stories written based on the Hosea and Gomer story in the Bible. If you are looking for a sweet, light and easy read. I recommend this book.
I was needing a light and easy read and this book was perfect for that. I enjoy different stories written based on the Hosea and Gomer story in the Bible. If you are looking for a sweet, light and easy read. I recommend this book.
May 18, 2020
The book that made me fall in-love with reading 10 years ago. I remembered I had a notebook where I write my reviews for the books back then, when Goodreads is not yet popular. I may not be able to rewrite those reviews here today (I lost the notebook) but one thing I remembered is that I wrote a glowing review for this book and I would always recommend it to people looking for inspiration and healing.
If you are into Christian/Clean Romance Novels, this book is one for you.
If you are into Christian/Clean Romance Novels, this book is one for you.
July 1, 2019
This book was loosely based on the story of Hosea and Gomer in the Bible. The author did a great job of modernizing the Bible story in a way that kept the message and spiritual application of the Bible story. There was a great emphasis on letting go of what God has forgiven and truly being a new person. And Hosea was a very likable person
December 31, 2023
This was so sweet! I needed a good romance, and this turned out better than I expected it to be.
May 27, 2025
A beautiful story of love.
July 19, 2025
One of my favourite books. ❤️❤️❤️
Amazing story and I loved Hosea and Angela
And I especially liked that it had a very clear plot 👌
Amazing story and I loved Hosea and Angela
And I especially liked that it had a very clear plot 👌
December 17, 2025
Love in every word.
February 18, 2017
A great story about mercy, forgiveness and love. I enjoyed how the author paralleled it to the biblical story of Hosea, who viewed people through a God lens of grace.
July 19, 2016
Oh, I just had to read this book once I stumbled upon the summary on another site. The heroine is a former prostitute (seriously, a heroine in a Christian romance novel who isn't as pure as the driven snow - someone call the press!) who falls in love with the pastor who led her to Jesus. Except she's not quite over being a prostitute, and it takes a lot of angst for her to realize that that's all in her past.
On the one hand, the heroine is definitely non-traditional. On the other hand, there's a shit ton of slut shaming done in this book (except, you know, she didn't choose to have sex). Angela, the prostitute-turned-choir-girl, keeps talking about how ashamed she is of "her" sin. Except the reader rather quickly finds out that she was forced into prostitution; it was never something she chose. Her mother sold her into the life and she was repeatedly raped. Angela eventually ran away at 18, as soon as she could manage to get away. So...how exactly did SHE sin?
And even if she HAD chosen to be a prostitute (except, really, who genuinely does that?), why all of the "I'm unworthy, no one will ever love me, god is trying to punish me" crap?
Dislike.
On the one hand, the heroine is definitely non-traditional. On the other hand, there's a shit ton of slut shaming done in this book (except, you know, she didn't choose to have sex). Angela, the prostitute-turned-choir-girl, keeps talking about how ashamed she is of "her" sin. Except the reader rather quickly finds out that she was forced into prostitution; it was never something she chose. Her mother sold her into the life and she was repeatedly raped. Angela eventually ran away at 18, as soon as she could manage to get away. So...how exactly did SHE sin?
And even if she HAD chosen to be a prostitute (except, really, who genuinely does that?), why all of the "I'm unworthy, no one will ever love me, god is trying to punish me" crap?
Dislike.
April 19, 2010
I just loved this book. It is inspirational romance. The story moved along very well and it was nice to read a romance without any sex or language in it. I would really recommend this book. It even has a lot of gospel principles about reprentence in it. It is hard to explain but really eye opening. I highly recommend it
February 14, 2009
Oh what a good read. Reminding us that we must forgive ourselves and what God has forgiven and cleansed is. We often hang out in our unforgiveness of ourselves or others and hold them or ourselves to the past.
July 19, 2008
A good underdog book....someone with no reason to succeed or have a good life changes her path and gets the life she deserves.
May 28, 2009
God has forgiven her past sins--but she's afraid that the preacher who is smitten with her will not.
October 4, 2009
Hosea <3
April 12, 2011
I thought the story-line was great, but the main character was a liiiitle too emotional. Not sensative, but...you know. I loved it though!
Read
August 1, 2011Very religious!
July 1, 2013
Patron Review:
Excellent reading- a good learning-lesson experience. Good message: "Love Inspired" very enjoyable human life experiences relative.
Excellent reading- a good learning-lesson experience. Good message: "Love Inspired" very enjoyable human life experiences relative.
May 10, 2016
its a very good book ............... loved it ,.. had read many times :))
Read
March 2, 2023This is a beautiful retelling of Hosea.
Read
September 2, 2013"Love Inspired(different authors)"
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews