Review: Gives a peek into day-to-day life in Biblical times, but didn't care for it
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 29, 2012
This is a hard book to review: it's well-written, but the stone imagery is WAY overdone, and I had a hard time with the characterization of the main character.  It was interesting to see the portrayal of everyday life: the role of male and female, visits to the temple, etc. as well as descriptions of Nazareth & Jerusalem.  I also hated the way the story bounced around: it opens with the scene portrayed in John 8 (the attempted stoning), and then we jump back to when she's married but already in love with someone else, then to childhood, and on and on.  It was sometimes difficult to place exactly what period a particular scene was from, and re-reading was occasionally necessary.We were obviously meant to empathize with the woman - although she knows what she was doing was wrong, the author goes to great lengths to build up the bond between the woman and her lover, as well as the cold treatment from her husband.  The author also took some license with choosing to have the woman play out another passage of Scripture (trying not to give that away) which I didn't care for.I did love this line, as the woman encountered Jesus: "But there was understanding in the teacher's eyes.  In the teacher's eyes I saw the love I had been seeking all my life." (Location 1494)  This is obviously the big take away of the book, but I felt it got rather muddled in between the descriptions of stones (grinding stones to prepare barley, stones in the road, stone blocks of the temple, valuable stones in her necklace - stone(s) is used 110 times in the story!)