Harlequin Love Inspired

                Love Inspired is the Christian line of Harlequin romance novels.  Christian faith plays a strong role in this series of Harlequin novels. It states in their advertisement  “you believe hearts can heal. Love inspired stories show that faith, forgiveness and hope have the power to lift spirits and change lives.”  This is a very G rated line of Harlequin novels, in fact their submission standards for manuscripts state that no pre-marital sex can take place in the story.

                

                How did a copy of the Love Inspired book The Rancher's Second Chance  into my hands? I had gotten my name and address on the list to be a Harlequin Ambassador, which is a program where Harlequin sends 5 free copies of a book to me and I can share the books with friends and family. I found out about it through Harlequin My Rewards.   I had done this before when I got a copies of Delores Fossen’s Lone Wolf Lawman and shared copies of that book with my more bookish girlfriends in lieu of giving Christmas cards last year.  But for this one I had a harder time finding gal pals interested in the book and so I donated them to the free library area in my apartment.

                

                However, the least that I figured that I could do would be to read the book. The premise is that Grace becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Lincoln. He wants her to have an abortion, but she wants to keep the child instead.  When she makes this decision, he becomes very violent. Brody is a rancher who protects her and of course he saves her life and they fall in love in the process.

                I tried very hard to evaluate this book as an overall story as best as possible without bringing my own bias into the book . However, I must acknowledge that I pursued a Master of Divinity in preparation to become a minister in the ELCA and I obtained this credential in the very liberal academic environment of Berkeley, California. I am now very cynical about institutional religion, have been studying the craft of fiction seriously for the past few years and have always been liberal in my political beliefs.   So, this was the framework that I had going into this book. I know I am not the target market however I really wanted to give this book a chance.

One of the reasons why the story did not lose me at the very beginning was because it utilized the language of Grace’s choice when it came to issue of abortion.  “…he tried to talk her into making a choice she did not want to make. In the end she refused.” Framing this in the context of choice made the character really grounded in the context of her own decisions instead of simply citing conservative propaganda. That is just the best way to handle writing about controversial issues and the book succeeds at keeping this tone from beginning to end.

However, this does not mean I am not deeply critical about what I read.  I am going to start out with the trope  of the evil ex in the romance novel. I have some tropes that I find that I enjoy reading constantly but the evil ex is not one of them.  I find that sometimes it is a very forced way to bring conflict into a novel. While domestic abuse is a very real issue that people struggle with, it seems more common that people break up due to the partner wanting different things but emotions often tend to run high during that period of time. I seriously want to read more romances where the former love interest is a good person but just not the right person. The issue of domestic abuse was handled well stressing that Grace should not have gone through any of that at all and that it was not her fault that her ex was being violent towards her. 

But having a story in an explicitly Christian line about a woman who feels so strongly that she needs to keep her child over having an abortion and having her safety at stake for making this choice makes it seem like a story about morality.  I read this novel with an outsider’s eye since I haven’t affiliated myself with Christianity for a few years. It makes it sound like all Christians are against abortion. The truth is that the Christians who are very vocal and constantly in the media for their stances take a pro-life stance but there ARE Christians who are pro-choice you just do not hear their voices as loudly.

I love Harlequin romance novels for how ridiculous they can be. But when you are explicitly aligning yourself with a belief structure like Love Inspired does it can be confusing for people who are outsiders to the faith what part of the story is based on the truths of Christianity and what part of the story is fiction.

 For being a “Christian” novel I thought that the novel fell short of fleshing out the components that were explicitly Christian.  The idea of going to church is not introduced until page 60 of the novel when Grace says “I want to go to church. I need to go to church.”  This sentiment comes out of the blue. There are no statements on what her motivation is for wanting to go to church or what she hopes to find from church. There was a lot leading up to the moment of being in church and a whole scene describing entering the church. But when they were at church nothing happens.  It mentioned that “the sermon that day was on peace. The music seemed to coincide.”  The description also says that “for Grace the day was about being in God’s presence.” But it never mentioned any of the actual events of the service and how Grace might have experienced God’s presence in the way she experienced worship. A similar thing happens when they are at Bible study and Brody “focused on the lesson, the discussion and not the confusion that was making him question what he had with Grace Thomas.”  Again, there was no mention of what scripture was being discussed in Bible study and the questions that may have engaged his mind. Having no elaboration on these kinds of things makes the spirituality in this novel feel very diluted.

However, the use of the religious language is downright laughable towards at the end of the book. He proposes marriage in the second to last chapter. She accepts. Its sweet and they start kissing each other. Then the baby cries just in time before their kisses get too hot and heavy right.   They attribute this to “divine intervention.” I can’t help but wonder who really talks this way when things start to feel sexy. It just does not feel very human or honest to me.  I found myself laughing hard at how ridiculous it felt.  I read another novel years ago (unfortunately I do not remember the title) that was not a Christian novel but when they had the characters starting to enjoy the heat of the moment they stopped and ran off to elope. I rolled my eyes at the situation.  I must come clean about my attitude towards the G rated romance novels: I just do not think they are any fun! I love reading sexy scenes and I do not like it when the bedroom door is closed too tight to the reader.

At the end of the day I just must acknowledge that I am not the target market for the Love Inspired line.  I probably wouldn’t have read this book if I didn’t get it for free.