Book Review ~ Rush To The Alter

Book title: Rush to the Alter
Author: Jamie Carie
Publisher: Self/eBook

Type of Book: Contemporary Romance, ebook only

My interest in this book: I enjoy this author so looked forward to reading this new release.

Ideas/message/plot: A young sweet-heart of a widow incredibly gets a job at a basketball franchise, falls in love with a basketball star, survives multiple challenges that cause her to grow through the heartbreak of her past relationship. 

Favorite characters, quotes/lines: Jake Hart--he's kind, generous, loving, compassionate, real. Who wouldn't love a hero in their life like that? He has it all. 

When I finished this book I felt: like I had just read a Nicolas Sparks book. Emotions. Raw. Real. However, any time I finish a Sparks book, I inevitably feel disappointed. I feel so sorry for these characters who go through so much--all without God. I was sure there would be more God relationship for some reason and there wasn't. I'm sorry, but one event of going to church doesn't cut it with me.

Overall: I LOVE reading Jamie Carie.  Reading this book made me feel for society. I think too many Christians today live like the characters of this book; thoughts of God when we are in trouble but not any time else. No worship of Him; no thanks for the every day incredible in our lives. We live, we do, we make happen. 

At first, when Jake and Maddie go to church in Chapter 15, I thought, "BRILLIANT!" What an outreach! She has written content that any non-Christian would love and approach without walls; now she will show how incredible God is as he heals the wounds in Maddie's life. Perhaps they were going to grow together & encourage each other in God, through the circumstances they came into. How God has a plan; He is in control; He loves us; He heals the broken hearted. 

Nope.

This could have been an incredibly ministry tool. How we are of the world then how God can change our lives. Thoroughly disappointed that my expectations were so utterly misplaced. I like to think the best of people, so perhaps this book is Carie's outreach tool and she will use her other novels to speak of God. I would hate to see her talent wasted, for Jamie Carie truly does have a gift for writing. 

Bookshelf worthy: Not for me. I don't want to have to explain it to others or have the chance that my daughter would see it and read it. I don't want her to think the values represented in this book are ok for people who are in love with God. 


Other books by this author: Wind Dancer, Snow Angel, The Snowflake, Love's First Light*, The Forgotten Castles series* (all by B&H publishing).
     *these books did make it on my shelf

I have enjoyed Love's First Light the most. "Christophé, the Count of St. Laurent, has lost his entire family to the blood-soaked French Revolution and must flee to an ancient castle along the southern border of France to survive. But the medieval city of Carcassonne proves more than a hiding place. Here Christophé meets the beautiful widow Scarlett, a complex and lionhearted woman suddenly taken by the undercover aristocrat’s passion for astronomy and its influence upon his faith. Although their acquaintance begins brightly enough, when the Count learns that Scarlett is related to the man who murdered his family, he turns from love and chooses revenge. Heaven only knows what it might take for Christophé to love again, to love his enemy, and to love unconditionally."

For more about this author, please see her web page at: http://jamiecarie.com/