Honor Redeemed by Christine Johnson

Honor Redeemed by Christine Johnson ISBN-13: 9780800723514 Trade Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Revell Released: July 5, 2016

Source: Review copy from the publisher.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Two years ago, Prosperity Jones waved farewell to her beloved David as the army sent him to faraway Key West. Now with her parents gone, she impulsively decides to travel from Nantucket to Key West and surprise him. Surely love will fill his eyes and he'll take care of her. Arriving penniless in the South, Prosperity is dismayed to find David married to someone else.

Nursing a broken heart, she gains the friendship--and the affection--of a kind doctor. But she can't stop thinking about David, even after his betrayal of her trust. If only his wife would die... Though she quickly repents of that thought.

Misunderstandings reign as Prosperity refuses to let David explain his actions. David wrestles with the betrayal of his wife, who tricked him into marrying her and now he's responsible for a child not his own.


My Review:
Honor Redeemed is set in 1852 in Key West. The romantic dual spent very little time together as Prosperity avoided David as much as possible. They had been deeply in love for years before this story, and their love endures despite David's marriage to another. Prosperity rejected the idea of marrying the doctor (a friend who respects and cares for her) to gain companionship and security since she doesn't feel a "I can't stop thinking about you" love for him. She'd rather do hard, hot manual labor for the rest of her life.

Prosperity caused much of her own pain through her impulsive actions and by repeatedly jumping to wrong conclusions. She was angry at David for a bunch of things he hadn't even done. She avoided David and cut him off when he tried to explain. She's "oh, I wronged David and hope he'll forgive my rudeness" one moment and then angry at him over another misunderstanding the next. She kept assuming the worst. She also had no care for her reputation, even though it's all she had left. The only check on her behavior was the threat of losing her job if she acted inappropriately, though this didn't help as she didn't think through the consequences of her actions.

I liked David. He did the honorable thing even when no one supported it. A fallen woman claimed that her baby was his. She produced witnesses that said the one night he got drunk, he went off with her. He's torn up by his unremembered sin and the need to break off his engagement with Prosperity, but he tried to make his marriage work even though his wife wasn't faithful to him.

The historical details were minimal and mostly acted as a backdrop. The Christian element was a brief mention that forgiveness is an act of will, not an emotion. There was no sex or bad language.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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