Rainer Maria Rilke

"Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be repaid you a thousand and a thousand times, and however your life may turn,-it will, I am certain of it, run through the fabric of your growth as one of the most important threads among all the threads of your experiences, disappointments, and joys."--Rainer Maia Rilke


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Friday, August 14, 2015

Rethinking History

Sin and Honey #2: A Touch of Betrayal by Taryn Scott

Historical Romance

What a fascinating premise! This book series focuses on telling the stories of women mentioned in the Bible. It has always been so interesting to me to think of what those women must have endured. History has too long remained silent on their stories and that is one of the reasons the Bible feels so stale and irrelevant to me. Without the stories of the women involved, how much of history are we missing?

This book, number two in the series, deals with Delilah, and her love affair with Samson. In the book, Delilah is not a character I much enjoyed getting to know. She isn't a likeable character the entire way through, although there are sparks of heroism in her. She's such a broken and tragic woman, and not the way I had pictured her at all from reading the Biblical tale. This book, though, really brought her to life and examined the betrayal of Samson in a different way. I'd always wondered why Delilah betrayed the hero and this book gives a plausible tale. In the end, it made me rethink the historical Delilah as well.

In the book, Delilah is a woman who has escaped from her hometown. She was run out of town after being accused of witchcraft. Fearing for her life, she escapes, but troubles soon follow her. Delilah has such a tragic history. Because she is a woman, and powerless in society, she becomes a prostitute and then servant in order to feed herself. Life is not kind to Delilah and she soon sees the whole world, and all the people, as mistrustful. Her past is found out and a local man threatens to expose her unless she traps Samson and turns over his secret so that he can be defeated. She agrees. After all, what's one broken man to her, a broken woman. In Samson, though, she sees something different from all the other men. While she went to betray him, she soon falls in love with him. If you're just expecting a Christian romance, think again. The action scenes are hot with passion overload!

The book, of course, has a tragic ending, as anyone familiar with the Biblical tale will know. Don't despair, though, as the author throws in a lot of imaginative details that will leave you thinking about this man and woman from history and how their story might have ended. This book was right up my alley and I look forward to checking out more in the series.