Liz Curtis Higgs

A retelling of stories from Genesis, set in eighteenth-century Scotland, finds Jamie and Evan McKie vying for the attention of their father, while Leana and Rose McBride compete for the love of the same man, setting in motion a thorny love triangle marked by parental manipulation and sibling rivalry. Original.

Thorn in My Heart

Elizabeth Raines

Thorn in My Heart, oh, what to say about this book? This was my first time learning that Christian fiction was a genre, I thought it would be very bland, but luckily it was not! This book is a retelling of the biblical story of Jacob, Rachel and Leah. While in our story it is Jamie, Rose, and Leana, set in the late 1700s in Scotland. If there is an audiobook for this book I would recommend that, the Scottish dialect can be hard to read at times. The chapters are the start of the book are short but the plot moves rather slow, as you get more into the book though the story starts to speed up. I didn't really care for the characters, I found Leana rather annoying but that could be on purpose by the author. This book made me realize that I really don't like love triangles, especially when it involves family like this one. I will not be continuing this series as I didn't like the characters but I did like the Scottish setting.

Jeni Enjaian

I must admit that I was extremely nervous before I started reading this book. This was one of the books (and series) in my collection that I remember absolutely adoring the first time I read it but then avoiding rereading it after being let down by other books that the author wrote. I have read several other books by Higgs and most of them fall prey to typical Christian fiction tropes. The last time I read through my collection, I kept this series on the shelf, unwilling to reread the book and have my beautiful memory tarnished.
Thankfully, no such thing occurred. 
I am more aware of the distinct parallels between the story and the Biblical story upon which it is patterned. Some of the parallels stuck out to me and made me wonder how these characters, so steeped in the Bible themselves could have possibly missed them. Only on one occasion did this test the limits of the suspension of disbelief.
I found myself completely engrossed in the book and eager to get into the remaining three. Hopefully they will all live up to my memory.

Thorn in My Heart

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