Kimberly T. (HeartsongChica) reviewed on 9/25/2011

The Preacher's Bride is the first novel from this debut author, though a second novel is now in print. I hope that the author's writing will improve from this first book. I found the story to drag in the middle, but I think the time period (England in the 17th century) and the setting (the societal pressure against the Puritans by the Royalists) contributed to the story's slowness.

I found Elizabeth Whitbread to be too perfect, and John Costin to be too selfish. I couldn't connect with either of them. As a blind person myself, I really take exception to the blind child Mary being characterized as prophetic or a mystic, when all she did is pay attention to her remaining senses, like blind people do. What really burned me is when Mary felt Elizabeth's face and proclaimed her beautiful. This myth that blind people must feel other folks' faces to know them is still perpetrated in books, and it is not common at all for a blind person to do this.

I didn't realize until reading the author note at the end of the book that The Preacher's Bride is a fictionalized account of the lives of John and Elizabeth Bunyan. John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress while spending years in jail, persecuted for his Puritan beliefs. If this information had been placed at the front of the book, it might have made a difference in the way I interpreted the story.

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