Review: A pleasant read but unconvincing
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2013
I picked this book with great excitement; anything with vets in it and animals will always lure me in. However, in spite of it being an okay story, I was disappointed.SPOILER ALERT****The main characters, Rachel and Scott, are likeable but unfortunately I did not get to know them very well. I feel the author could have expanded their characters far more than their work lives. We get to know that Rachel has problems with her family but not why. The romance part - for me - was unconvincing. The protagonists work together, but there is no sense of them getting to know each other deeply. They have dinner together but they don't have a history of dating. They go to church together, but Scott spends most of his time with Rachel's sister, whose romance comes out of left field with no prior history. The love aspects skim the surface of the book, with no expansion of ideas or depth.The plot is religious/Christian, but from being wayward Christians, two of the characters suddenly - with no apparent thought or agonising - become re-committed in one single service. Of course, the book makes no bones about being a religious novel, but the lengthy tracts slow the story down and almost threw this reader off course. It felt as though the author was using the book to teach a religious message, which rendered the plot secondary. If this is what she meant to achieve, then fine, she did that.The writing is loose in part and repetitious. I am not saying by any means that this is a bad book, only that it is - in my opinion - a couple of drafts away from completion.