IgniteLit

Title: The Pharisee’s Wife
Author: Janette Oke
Major Themes: Biblical Fiction, Family
Synopsis: After her forced marriage to a young Pharisee who is longing to make a name for himself, Mary encounters loneliness and a strange draw toward this prophet Jesus who her husband seems to hate.

Although I didn’t grow up reading any of Janette Oke’s books, I’ve been aware of her Love Comes Softly series since I was very young. One day, I promised myself, I’d try her books out—but time has gone on, and I always had plenty of books to read, so I never quite got around to actually picking any of her books up. Until The Pharisee’s Wife came along, anyway! Since I love biblical fiction, and I’ve been wanting to find out if her books are worth any of the hype I keep hearing about, I decided to try out this story. I was cautiously optimistic that I’d enjoy her writing, and I did—but unfortunately, it didn’t end up being a book for me.

Publisher’s description:

My thoughts:

I was surprised by how quickly I got sucked into this story. The writing flowed smoothly, and I enjoyed how gripping it was—despite landing more on the telling side of the spectrum than showing, I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

Unfortunately, I struggled to connect with the characters, and some felt almost more like caricatures than characters. Though there were elements of the Biblical/historical fiction side that I enjoyed—and I’ll get to those in a moment—portions of that didn’t feel very strong, in my opinion. At one point, a devout Jew (who had heard about Jesus a few times but never met Him) prayed to Him before His resurrection. That felt unrealistic enough to me that it jerked me out of the narrative.

There was a lot to appreciate about the setting as a whole, though. I enjoyed getting a peek at what it may have been like to be a trainee-Pharisee; for some reason, that really intrigues me. I also appreciated getting a bit of a glimpse into what the Apostle Paul’s viewpoint may have been toward Jesus before his conversion. The village setting where Mary grew up was also interesting; I would have loved to get more of an idea of what living there looked like for her. I also enjoyed getting the perspective on the early church, as presented here. Although that part of the story surprised me, I was encouraged by their faith and tenacity under persecution and the hope they had for Jesus’ return.

Overall, I came away from The Pharisee’s Wife somewhat disappointed. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but as a story meant to help us think about our role in the world as Christ’s followers, especially regarding Jesus’ imminent return (as Oke says in her author’s note), it does what it set out to do. I found the premise intriguing, and although I struggled with the story structure, I think that was more intentional on the author’s part than just to give us another nice, simple, easy story that you forget about the day after you finish it (case in point: I read this book in early December, and I’m still thinking about it three months later). If you enjoy easy-to-read historical fiction, and books whose primary focus isn’t romance, I’d recommend you check out this story.

I was given a complimentary copy of this book, and this is my honest opinion of it.