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A review by callienicole
Bridge to Haven by Francine Rivers
2.0
I'm telling you now, this review will contain spoilers! Consider yourself warned.
Bridge To Haven was a sweeping novel, the story of Abra Matthews, who was left under a bridge as an infant and found by a pastor. Rivers knows how to keep you turning the pages, and overall, I enjoyed the actual reading of this novel. I felt like I became friends with the characters. In the end, it ends up being a story of redemption when Abra finally gives her life over to the Lord.
Still, I struggle to give it a better rating for the following reasons.
I forget how Rivers tends to take her main characters and rip their lives completely apart before they start to put things back together. That's what happened with Abra. She gets involved with a bad guy, and runs away with him, even though she knows he's only after her physically. He ends up practically using her as a semi-willing sex slave. This was hard for me to read, not just because it was a disturbing storyline, but also because I found it hard to believe in a way. Abra seemed over-the-top naive. I know that in real life some girls do go after guys who treat them like dirt, but I found this whole storyline hard to relate to.
After some more ripping apart of Abra's life, she finally loses everything and goes back home to Haven with Joshua. Joshua was another complaint for me. I think Rivers was trying to make him somehow representative of Jesus (based on the name and a couple symbolic things in the story), but Joshua was over-the-top perfect in this story. To me, no human written character should be portrayed as perfect. Only one man lived a perfect life, and that WAS Jesus. In the afterword Rivers even says something about how Joshua wasn't perfect, and I was thinking...how exactly was he not? He seriously didn't do one thing wrong in the entire story. I dislike stories where one character is a complete train wreck, and the other is completely perfect, and ladies...let's just all realize that this guy was totally a figment of River's imagination. There isn't a man who ever lived who treats his romantic love as perfectly as Josh treats Abra in this book. I think there is some danger in reading books where the male romantic interest has zero flaws.
Finally, Joshua and Abra eventually get married, and as I feared would happen, Rivers goes into detail about their wedding night. Not completely explicit detail, but explicit enough to make me frantically flip the pages with my cheeks burning. And I'm a married women. I think it's worth noting that I would NEVER let my teenage daughter read this book, for this scene alone. Three complaints here:
1) This much detail is totally inappropriate for a Christian book, in my opinion. Erotic literature is the equivalent of porn for women, and while Rivers avoids words that would technically make this "erotic"...well, there was enough to make me blush, feel embarrassed, and skip past a couple pages. Sometimes what isn't said explicitly is just as powerful as what is said explicitly.
2) Once again, Joshua is just too perfect in how he handles the whole situation! Abra is obviously nervous about the wedding night with all the trauma she has suffered in that area, and he somehow does all the right things to make her feel completely comfortable and "please" her (eek, I feel weird even typing that, because this whole scene was embarrassing, even though I just skimmed it). Which leads me to my final point...
3) Do you know how unrealistic this scene is? Real life couples often have to work for YEARS to overcome their sexual baggage and abusive pasts to have a healthy sexual relationship. The characters here just overcome all of Abra's issues in one passion-filled night, and it's completely absurd. I imagine this portrayal could be somewhat discouraging to people who are still working through sexual issues in their relationship.
So I took off a few stars because of Joshua's ridiculous perfection, and what was in my opinion inappropriate sexual content. The story was good, but I could have done without those things I listed above.
Bridge To Haven was a sweeping novel, the story of Abra Matthews, who was left under a bridge as an infant and found by a pastor. Rivers knows how to keep you turning the pages, and overall, I enjoyed the actual reading of this novel. I felt like I became friends with the characters. In the end, it ends up being a story of redemption when Abra finally gives her life over to the Lord.
Still, I struggle to give it a better rating for the following reasons.
I forget how Rivers tends to take her main characters and rip their lives completely apart before they start to put things back together. That's what happened with Abra. She gets involved with a bad guy, and runs away with him, even though she knows he's only after her physically. He ends up practically using her as a semi-willing sex slave. This was hard for me to read, not just because it was a disturbing storyline, but also because I found it hard to believe in a way. Abra seemed over-the-top naive. I know that in real life some girls do go after guys who treat them like dirt, but I found this whole storyline hard to relate to.
After some more ripping apart of Abra's life, she finally loses everything and goes back home to Haven with Joshua. Joshua was another complaint for me. I think Rivers was trying to make him somehow representative of Jesus (based on the name and a couple symbolic things in the story), but Joshua was over-the-top perfect in this story. To me, no human written character should be portrayed as perfect. Only one man lived a perfect life, and that WAS Jesus. In the afterword Rivers even says something about how Joshua wasn't perfect, and I was thinking...how exactly was he not? He seriously didn't do one thing wrong in the entire story. I dislike stories where one character is a complete train wreck, and the other is completely perfect, and ladies...let's just all realize that this guy was totally a figment of River's imagination. There isn't a man who ever lived who treats his romantic love as perfectly as Josh treats Abra in this book. I think there is some danger in reading books where the male romantic interest has zero flaws.
Finally, Joshua and Abra eventually get married, and as I feared would happen, Rivers goes into detail about their wedding night. Not completely explicit detail, but explicit enough to make me frantically flip the pages with my cheeks burning. And I'm a married women. I think it's worth noting that I would NEVER let my teenage daughter read this book, for this scene alone. Three complaints here:
1) This much detail is totally inappropriate for a Christian book, in my opinion. Erotic literature is the equivalent of porn for women, and while Rivers avoids words that would technically make this "erotic"...well, there was enough to make me blush, feel embarrassed, and skip past a couple pages. Sometimes what isn't said explicitly is just as powerful as what is said explicitly.
2) Once again, Joshua is just too perfect in how he handles the whole situation! Abra is obviously nervous about the wedding night with all the trauma she has suffered in that area, and he somehow does all the right things to make her feel completely comfortable and "please" her (eek, I feel weird even typing that, because this whole scene was embarrassing, even though I just skimmed it). Which leads me to my final point...
3) Do you know how unrealistic this scene is? Real life couples often have to work for YEARS to overcome their sexual baggage and abusive pasts to have a healthy sexual relationship. The characters here just overcome all of Abra's issues in one passion-filled night, and it's completely absurd. I imagine this portrayal could be somewhat discouraging to people who are still working through sexual issues in their relationship.
So I took off a few stars because of Joshua's ridiculous perfection, and what was in my opinion inappropriate sexual content. The story was good, but I could have done without those things I listed above.