Anissa of Syria: A Christian Refugee's Saga from the Syrian War to the American Dream: Volume 1 (The Love of Antioch Series)
By Jonah Pierce
A good Christian novel … a boring book. God I hate myself for writing that but that’s how I feel. This book will not be appreciated by people outside of the faith. Not because its Christian, not because it includes aspect of the character’s faith and her struggles, it won’t be appreciated because, outside of persecution and religious madness, nothing really happens.
That might be a slap to the face for Pierce and, like, all of Syria but that’s how I felt. Yeah we have dramatic events that should never happen to people, we have suffrage, lost innocence, and cruelty beyond belief but guess what? The climax of these events are all ruined by their mention in the very first page of the book.
For reasons unknown, Pierce decided to warn us in the character’s own words by telling us about basically everything that’s about to happen in the book. You get the entire story before its begun and then its like, well why am I even reading this? Then when something does happen the only thing I feel is … nothing. Like, oh yeah that’s the terrible night she mentioned earlier…bummer.
I wanted to be surprised, wowed, or even a little bit sad but it was ruined. It was a spoiler put in by the author himself!
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the book, I just knew what was going to happen next. The writing, on the oter hand, was spectacular. Characterization was great and completely believable, the emotion was high and actions were quick. I liked the diary style that was utilized and enjoyed the POV, I don’t think I found a single grammatical error which was relaxing as a reader.
It was easy to see that Pierce had a lot of heart and passion for this book, even though I didn’t become a huge fan, I appreciated the love that was shown through the writing. These pages aren’t just pieces of a book, they are clearly so much more to the author and that is evident in the great detail and dedication to the characters and the plot itself. We do have a beautiful but heartbreaking story that needs to be told, it just wasn’t the story for me.
I would recommend this book to Christian readers and any fans of contemporary fiction. If you liked A Thousand Splendid Suns, or The Kite Runner then you’ll love this.
*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*