The wedding chapel

The Wedding Chapel

Okay, so...this one called up some pretty decided opinions from me, so I'm going to do my review in a slightly different format than usual to be sure I accurately express my thoughts/feelings.

1. Readability. Score 2/5. I tried months ago to read this book and laid it down in the first chapter. I tried again a few weeks later, the week it was coming out, in order to get my review up in time. I made it four chapters in and got frustrated and put it down. Last week I read a friend's review and decided to give it another try, so I knew I'd have to keep reading if I was going to manage. Once I got halfway, the going was better, as I'd gotten interested in the characters.

The grammar drove me batty. I honestly would have been able to read more easily if I'd had a print copy and a red pen so I could fix it along the way. Misplaced modifiers and passive verbs intruded a couple times as well. There were spelling errors on nearly every page in the last third of the egalley copy. I hope that a lot of this would have been fixed before final publication, but after seeing how much made it into the final copy of Hauck's last title, I am doubtful that all of it was fixed.

2. Characters. Score 5/5. Honestly, it was the characters who got me to the last page. I wanted much more of Jack and Taylor and their attempts to make their marriage work. They're in love, but they come from broken families, and they are having a really hard time with communication and assumptions. I wanted them to fix things and have their happily-ever. Collette I didn't particularly like until the very end, and I found Jimmy likable but not compelling.

3. Plot. Score 3/5. Sweetest thing ever that a man would build a wedding chapel for the girl he loved, stone by stone and beam by beam. The rest of the plot, secrets and all, I guessed accurately by chapter 10. Peg's secret? Taylor's surprise? Learning about her grandparents? The history about her father? Sorry, got it all. Does that make me a jaded reader? Maybe.

4. Is it clean? Score 2/5. Ages 18+. Cursing: “he swore”; nothing specific stated, other than a ‘golly g...' which in my world is a swear. Sex: stops short of explicit description...shows pretty much everything else; mentioned quite a bit. Morals: sleeping together outside of marriage, affairs, living together before marriage. It was a major, major deal breaker for me to have the chapel touted as a holy or miraculous place, and then to realize for certain that the man who built it took his true love's virtue before marriage right there on the floor. Umm...cue major blushing??

5. Is it Christian? Score 0/5. If a book is published in the Christian market, I include this factor in my rating. So...Jesus was mentioned exactly one time in the entire book. One time. The Holy Spirit is mentioned about a half-dozen times. God is mentioned over and over, and ‘having faith'; even ‘miraculous' is used several times. One thing that was particularly surprising to me was that Taylor made a comment to Jack near the end of, “Weren't you one of the Christian kids in high school?” or something to effect. I mean, she's been married to him for six months and dated him for two, and she doesn't know? Reading the Bible is recommended once; it is said that Jimmy dealt with his bitterness by starting to go to church and reading through the New Testament and noticing how much it spoke of forgiveness. Other comments are made: “I'm trying to get to Heaven;” “Having faith enough to get to Heaven;” etc.
Don't get me wrong; the book is extremely spiritual, almost mystical. Some of the characters hear an audible heartbeat that they believe is the presence of God. I am not going to argue that point. I am going to point out something, though. Talking about God and feeling a presence and having faith is not the salvation of the Bible. There are many faiths and only one Saviour. As such, this book fails to be a Christian book. It could nearly as easily be a Jewish or New Age book. Faith in itself cannot save. Many people understand the existence of God/gods and the need to have faith in their lives. What makes Christians Christian is one thing: Jesus Christ. You cannot relegate Jesus to one reference and have a Christian book.

Overall score: 2/5.
The characters make immoral choices and do deal with the broken lives that result. There is a lot of heartache and a very broken large family picture. I feel that the mystical “heartbeat” of the story really fell flat. I had a hard time with a lot of the moral implications of the past as the story came to feel more and more like a classic soap opera. Yes, the ending is sweet, but the storytelling is not a winner for me. I found the time-period jumps jarring in a number of places, and even the flashbacks felt confusing a couple of times. Once I realized what the Big Reveal was going to be, I did feel a little cheated, like the author had been keeping secrets just for the fun of my not knowing what was going on.
It will probably be a while before I pick up another Rachel Hauck book.
There is so much more I could say, but I am trying my level best to avoid spoilers.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free ecopy to review.