I was provided a complimentary copy of this book by Barbour Publishing, NetGalley. I was not compensated for this review and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. I was not required to write a positive review.
Shadows of Hope by Georgiana Daniels Published by Barbour Publishing on April 1st 2018
Genres: Christian, Contemporary Women, Fiction, General
Pages: 320
Source: Barbour Publishing, NetGalley
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A story of hope in the aftermath of inconceivable betrayal and broken dreams What if. . . . . .you struggled with infertility but unknowingly befriended your husband’s pregnant mistress?
What if. . . . . .the woman you were seeing behind your wife’s back gets pregnant, threatening your job and marriage?
What if. . . . . .your boyfriend never told you he was married and you discover you’re pregnant?
Crisis pregnancy worker Marissa Moreau suspects her husband is cheating, but little does she know how close to home her husband’s infidelity hits. College student Kaitlyn Farrows is floundering after a relationship with her professor leaves her pregnant. Soon she lands a job and a support system at the local pregnancy resource center and things seem to be turning around. But when Marissa and Kaitlyn become friends, neither one knows they share a connection—Colin, Marissa’s husband and Kaitlyn’s former professor. When their private lives collide, the two women must face the ultimate test of their faith and choose how to move forward as they live in the shadows of hope.
Forget the guy for a minute in this all too common triangle. Look at Marissa, she’s almost sorta got her life together. She’s got a job she loves, a husband who is sometimes home, but she’s lacking the one thing she wants. The glue that flaked away in her marriage, a child. Look at Kaitlyn, twenty-something college student who falls for her professor. Entangled in a brief affair she finds herself pregnant, after he calls everything off. Never knowing he was married, but she’s still pregnant and now facing life as a single mother. These are stories that are part of our everyday world. Miscarriage, infertility, even unplanned pregnancy are all things that so many women in our society deal with every day. Let’s toss the guy back into the mix. I know, I know he’s a skeez but wait a minute. Colin is almost a typical guy. His marriage isn’t what it once it was, he and Marissa have lost their common ground and even their focus. He finds himself attracted to a young woman and doesn’t think before he acts. He tries to fix it but it’s already too late, Kaitlyn is already pregnant. It’s easy to want to bash him for all of this. It’s easy to find yourself more closely aligned with one woman or the other and go on a full scale bashing spree. Don’t. The truth is they all played a part in getting there, each of them have something about them that we can identify with, and they each have to find a path to the next step.
I’m gonna be honest, while the story was engaging and drew you into the mix of these characters it tended to drag in places. I liked how the story flow switched between the three main characters but sometimes I felt like they weren’t connecting with the story and with me. I didn’t get a good feel for Colin as a person. I mean I got him as the cheating husband, I got him as the ex, and even to some small margin as the professor but I didn’t understand his motivation in any of the bigger picture. I’m not sure if it’s because he wasn’t solid in his identity so I didn’t grasp it but. . . Colin just came across as a self-absorbed jerk that had a fringe of emotions and feelings that he never really explored. Marissa was so deep into her own head that she took all the emotion that no one else had and owned it in spades. I mean, I get that she had a lot to work through from her life but she was an emotion drain that started to come across as a touch whiny. A lot of the same situations came up over and over with no real resolution, much less forward momentum on them that it just dragged. Perhaps about fifty less pages would have been a bit more concise?
I know I sound hateful right now but I really did enjoy this book. I would have liked to have a better understanding of Colin and who he really is as a person, and even to some degree Kaitlyn as there’s so much about her as a person I’m interested in knowing. Marissa, her I’d love to see her in some intense therapy to deal with her life as a whole though not with Tristan. Tristan and Colin is another avenue that I need to see explored because that right there played such a role in this whole shebang that was never truly addressed. I would love to see an addition to this story. Where they all actually end up. I’ve not read this author before but I enjoy her writing style, I enjoy that she takes on the hard topics from a Christian perspective, and I look forward to reading more by her.
About Georgiana Daniels
Georgiana Daniels resides in the beautiful mountains of Arizona with her super-generous husband and three talented daughters. She graduated from Northern Arizona University with a bachelor’s degree in public relations, and now has the privilege of homeschooling by day and wrestling with the keyboard by night. She enjoys sharing God’s love through fiction, and is exceedingly thankful for her own happily ever after.
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