The Book of Hours

Summary: A widower inherits a British estate, but he may lose it before he is even unpacked.

I am trying to read more fiction. This is a goal that I have almost every year. I really am conviced that fiction is important, but I have a tendancy to gravitate toward "important" books. I saw that the Book of Hours was on sale and I picked it up. I read his book The Maestro when I was in high school and I enjoyed it. It was a book about a musician who was a real artist and as he came to faith he saw he could incorporate his faith and art. I real a lot of Christian novels as a teen and I have read very few past my teen years because so few felt worthwhile.

As I read The Book of Hours I couldn't help but think about it as a novel version of a Hallmark movie. I enjoy a Hallmark movie very now and then, but I don't really confused it for great art. It is fluff and fluff every now and then if fine. As much as can enjoy some fluff here and there, I do think that Karen Swallow Prior's critique of Christians as overly attached to Victorian values, and mistake those Victorian values for Christian ones fits here. This is a sentimental novel that deserves the critique that Prior has for senatamental novels. But it also fits all of the standard Hallmark tropes. A widower from out of town inherits an estate. He is penniless and finds the estate is going to soon be sold for back taxes. He meets the town's young (single) doctor who immediately hates him for not caring about the property and allowing it to fall into disrepair. There is a greedy developer to provide some tension.

And while I don't think it really makes sense within the story, the widower's wife and her beloved aunt jointly wrote him clues before they both died that he has to find. If he does, he may find something valuable that he can sell to keep the property. That is if the sketchy gardener (who used to date the doctor) doesn't stop them first. Along the way the widower and the doctor help the local vicar in his fight to get the church bells reinstated in the town again so that the community can remember that God. The sentamental, nearly love at first sight, romance between the grieving widower who seems to have gotten over his late wife's cancer death very quickly after showing up doesn't have any real depth.

The story is fine. For the $2 price I paid, I am not disappointed, but I also have no real interest in picking up another book by the same author. There are a lot of good novels that have more depth to them than this one.

I posted this on my blog originally at https://bookwi.se/book-of-hours/