Book Review: My Soul to Keep

Another book I recently finished is My Soul to Keep by Melanie Wells. I've been going back and forth for a few days on how to review this, because honestly, I'm just torn. My gut reaction is to say that I really enjoyed the book - because I did. It's incredibly well written, the plot is fantastic and keeps you flipping pages once you start (it's terribly hard to put down), and there's just enough suspense to get you wondering but not so much that you're flipping to the end of the book to alleviate the tension. The characters are well done - the good characters are likeable, if reasonably flawed (but not so much that they're just as annoying as the people you get to deal with in real life), and the bad ones are bad - there's no ambiguity so you don't end up at the end of the book wondering if you were supposed to have been rooting for someone else. On these points alone, I would give it 5 stars out of 5. Except for one, major to my mind, thing.

This book is published by Multnomah - a Christian publisher - and consequently sold as Christian fiction. And the author does some rudimentary weaving of what can really only be termed as spiritual warfare plot lines (think Frank Peretti - in fact, in the first chapter I thought that was the direction/genre/angle the story would be taking). And yet, if you're looking at the story from that perspective, you never actually get the idea that God conquers. So while sure, the good guys win - they seem to do it on their own merits - and this is concerning to me because fighting Satan can't be done under your own steam. It just can't. And this is where the difference between a Peretti thriller and this book by Ms. Wells is hugely apparent. Sure, the main character will occasionally remind herself that she should pray (not going so far as to actually do so though), or she flips through her Bible looking for something comforting to leap out at her - but as I read I honestly wondered why Satan would bother with someone whose faith is so nominal. It just doesn't seem like she merits the special attention that he lavishes on her in any way - especially since she relies on herself (and really only herself) to "win" - only reaching for God as a last resort - and even then not really seeming to believe that it's worth her time to do so.

Throw in the fact that the main character finds out about her "guardian angel" from a psychic who tells her that she shares an aura with her daughter - and this means they share the same angel. Then the psychic goes on to give the main character an Ankh necklace for protection - which the girl dons - because the Ankh is the symbol of this angel. I have a hard time believing that an angel - supposedly an angel from God - is going to choose the Ankh as his symbol, when the Ankh is typically only a symbol of the occult, even if it is meant to symbolize life and immortality. And this angel is actually supposed to be one of the good guys, he's not portrayed as anything other than her helper from God.

So I'm torn - because it's really a great read. And if the whole spiritual warfare-esque angle had been omitted completely, or if she had just let it stand as "other world forces" as seen by a psychic, without tying God into it as nominally as she does (though it's doubtful at that point that you could really try to call it Christian fiction), it still would have been a good read. However, because of the problems I listed above, I have a hard time recommending it to anyone other than people who read fiction with their filters intact and who are going to consider and judge the reading material - even if it's coming from a Christian publisher. For thinking readers who are willing and able to enjoy a good story while filtering out questionable content, this is a good book.