An Unbreakable Hope (by Kristin Billerbeck)

(Amazon UK link)

I thought there was a lot of potential in this book, 'An Unbreakable Hope' by Kristin Billerbeck. It features Emily, a naive and sweet young lady in the United States from a fairly strict Christian background. She attends the wedding of a friend to her ex-boyfriend, and meets someone unlike anyone she's ever come across before...

Darin has a shaven head and wears an earring. Emily quickly learns that he used to be wild and alcoholic. He's a changed character, but his parents and previous girlfriend are convinced he's just going through a 'religious' phase and will soon return to his normal self.

The message about non-judgementalism is good, and the few 'action' sections of the novel also work well. Unfortunately, the majority of the book is filled with author thoughts and cliches, or random and long-winded thoughts from the main characters. Worse, these thoughts often didn't fit with what we already knew about them.

I gather the author now mainly writes chick-lit. In a way I'm not surprised as that was the overall feel of this book. But it was made even worse by the triteness of some of the Christian cliches.

Still, I kept reading and the ending was satisfying, albeit entirely predictable.