Beautiful. Moving. Fast paced. All the feels. “The Thief of Corinth” by Tessa Afshar is all these things and more! I took two courses specifically on 1 and 2 Corinthians in college, so my heart has a special place for these books of the Bible. Paul is also one of my favorite Bible characters, so I loved reading about him in this book as well! Ms. Afshar truly makes first-century Corinth come alive! She adds so much detail of the setting and time period that I could vividly picture this bustling city.
Ms. Afshar uses a more edgy writing style and tries to be true to the time period by showing the good and bad. Corinth was a very corrupt place. I think Ms. Afshar does a good job of being realistic but not too graphic.
I love that the story is told from a younger girl’s point of view (Ariadne) and reads more like a Young Adult novel, in my opinion. But it can be enjoyed by young and old alike. Ariadne faced a lot of rejection in her life and is part of a corrupt, fractured family, torn apart by divorce. Even though the book takes place in Biblical times, teens and adults will find the themes very relevant today. Some of these themes are family dynamics, searching for a parent’s approval, wanting to be popular, dysfunctional families and reconciliation. I highly recommend this book!
Content: This definitely falls in the edgy Christian fiction category. I would give it a PG-13 rating. See my above paragraph on my thoughts regarding the content. Some examples of the content are: a mention of men being drunk; men drink wine; a scene showing a slave girl has been raped; a mention of a child having been beaten; talk of prostitution at the temple of Aphrodite; talks about men competing in sports in the nude; a man committed suicide; mentions that people swear, but the word isn’t actually written.
Rating: I give this book a solid 5 stars!
Genre: Christian fiction; Biblical fiction; Historical
I want to thank Tessa Afshar and Tyndale House Publishers for the complimentary copy of this book for review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I express in this review are my own. This is in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s CFR 16, Part 255.
About the Author:
Tessa Afshar is an award-winning author of historical and biblical fiction. Her novel, Land of Silence, was voted by Library Journal as one of five top Christian Fiction titles of 2016, and nominated for the 2016 RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for best Inspirational Romance.Harvest of Gold won the prestigious 2014 Christy Award in the Historical Romance category.
Her book, Harvest of Rubies, was a finalist for the 2013 ECPA Book Award in the fiction category.
Her first novel, Pearl in the Sand, won her “New Author of the Year” by the Family Fiction sponsored Reader’s Choice Awards 2011.
Tessa was born in Iran and lived there for the first fourteen years of her life. She moved to England where she survived boarding school for girls and fell in love with Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, before moving to the United States permanently. Her conversion to Christianity in her twenties changed the course of her life forever.
Tessa holds an MDiv from Yale University where she served as cochair of the Evangelical Fellowship at the Divinity School. She serves on the staff of one of the oldest churches in America. But that has not cured her from being addicted to chocolate.
Contact Tessa at tessaafshar.com or on Facebook at: facebook.com/AuthorTessaAfshar.
To purchase the book click here
No comments:
Post a Comment