A review by ratgirlreads
Rachel & Leah by Orson Scott Card

Myths, fairy tales, stories told in the oral tradition of ancient people have always a compelling fascination, even for modern readers.  However, being a modern reader, I also love in-depth character development, psychological analysis, detailed dialogues, and exploration of complex relationships, so I have an especial fondness for the novels in which an author tells one of those ancient stories and builds in those modern components.  This is precisely what Orson Scott Card does in Rachel and Leah, developing strong, unique personalities for all the familiar but flat Biblical characters.  He devises events and emotions to provide comprehensible motives and reasons for actions that, in the Biblical telling, sometimes seem baldfacedly cruel—such as Laban’s trickery in substituting his daughter Leah for Rachel in Jacob’s marriage bargain.  In Card’s story, everyone’s motives are good, and the trickery becomes a misunderstanding, leaving the reader feeling sympathetic towards all the characters, and villainizing no one.