The Centurion's Wife - Book Review

I orginally wrote this book review for Street Articles, which rejected the article stating they do not take submissions related to religion.  Although, oddly, they accepted book reviews on two other Christian romances:  one at the same time.

Rather than dilute the review, I decided to post it to my own blog as is and follow up at some future time with blog posts on the two follow-on books in the series.
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I’ll start out the review by recommending this book to those interested in Biblically-based fiction. 

The first of a series of three books set in New Testament times, The Centurion’s Wife gives a window in the culture of the times and, in the final analysis, provides some deepened perspective into the days of Jesus’s ministry and the early church.

Giving a window into the culture of the time, however, also provides the rub in this instance. 

I found the book somewhat of a difficult read, and a part of that involved the difficulty of following the cultural aspects of the book as well as some confusion resulting from the setting.  However, the second and third books in the series I found much more enjoyable reads, and perhaps because I’d absorbed enough from this book I did not find the same difficulty in the later two books in the series:  which rely on the background for the major characters set up this one.

The Centurion’s Wife begins during the lifetime of Jesus, but continues into the earliest days of the “house churches” of the Acts of the Apostles days.

As one would expect with Janette Oke one of the co-authors, given that many regard Oke as having established Christian romance as a viable genre, the storyline of the book is that of a Christian romance. 

Oke and co-author Davis Bunn [who has first billing in the byline] set a romance against the background of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus and the establishment of the early church.  They take some traditional Scriptural personalities and build the storyline around them in unusual and sometimes unexpected ways.

It is, from that viewpoint, a worthwhile read that provides insights into the culture of the early church.  However, some of the events seem contrived and almost out of place and, in comparison to other books of Oke’s I’ve read, the sense of pacing seems a bit off.  Some aspects of the storyline seem too drawn out for what they are, and some seem to happen too fast given a lack of foreshadowing that prevents that “out of the blue” response from the reader.

The authors do not rely entirely on Scriptural personalities to people this novel. 

They mix several original characters in with personalities from the Scriptures and in more than one instance introduce a culturally-appropriate given name for characters who appear in Scripture but are not associated with a name. The storyline involves the building of a romance between the male and female protagonist set against the backdrop of individual conflicts each of these characters has concerning the establishment of the Christian church.  Some of the cultural customs can pose a struggle to the reader to come to grips with; as they certainly did me.

The book is structurally sound, and from my limited knowledge also seems historically and Scripturally accurate and from that perspective and the perspective that it is necessary background to the other two novels in the series, it is a worthwhile read.

However, I found it a more difficult and somewhat less entertaining read than Ms. Oke’s other works, particular the Love Comes Softly series.

Perhaps the reader will have the most fulfilling experience with this novel by thinking of it more as an educational read than an entertainment novel and as necessary background to the next two both of which I found more enjoyable.  However, The Centurion’s Wife still has enough of a romance storyline to recommend as a worthwhile read, all in all.