From the Publisher: "Secrets over Sweet Tea follows the lives of a boisterous pastor’s wife, a polished news anchor, and a beleaguered divorce attorney as they intersect on the tree-lined streets of Franklin, Tennessee, when scandal threatens to topple their carefully constructed worlds. Jones touches on delicate social issues, such as infidelity, gossip, rape, and divorce, yet keeps her novel light with the Southern humor and charm she is known for to balance the novel’s message."
I stopped reading the book very early into it. I am uncomfortable reading about other people’s
sex lives and the first bedroom scene in this book made me feel uncomfortable.
One of the reasons why I avoid secular
fiction, in favor of Christian fiction, is that I don’t want to read about the
sexual encounters of others. This book
actually contained a couple of sexual references regarding the preacher’s wife
right from the get-go and that turned me off.
Some things should be left sacred and, in my opinion, writing about the
sacred act of making love somehow demeans it.
I understand that this is one of the new “big things” in Christian
literature---to take what secular authors have smeared and try to make it
holy. However, I wonder if Christian
authors consider that they’re not just writing for happily married people.
What about the single woman who reads this
scene and inserts the face of someone she knows into the imagined scene? That’s commiting adultery in one’s
heart. What about the unhappily married
woman who uses this scene to draw comparisons to her own husband and lacking sex life?
I understand that it is very likely the author used these scenes and descriptions to set the stage for the bigger story her book was trying to tell. It's very possible that I am just not meant to be ministered to by this book at this time.
I am disappointed that I was not able to read
the book as the description was attractive.
However, I’m not willing to let someone else’s lovemaking scene, even if
it contains fictional characters, run through my mind and distort what is going
on in my real life marriage.
Visit Denise Hildreth Jones at Reclaiming Hearts.
I received a free copy of this book from Tyndale House Publishers to review. All opinions are honest and are my own.
