The Ideal Wife by Jacquelin Thomas. New York: Pocket Book, 2009. 263pp.
By: Treasure White
Award winning author, Jacquelin Thomas engages readers with her latest novel centered on faith, values, and compromising relationships. Thomas utilizes her story to encourage women of God to maintain their beliefs by not allow negative influences to hinder their true purpose. Unfortunately for Thomas’ main character Jana Collins, that negative force resided in her husband. Jana is compelled to please her husband in accordance to God’s word but selfishly her husband deceives, manipulates, and degrades her into lifestyle changes that push her childhood teachings into turmoil.
Jana’s many challenges were constant reminders of the amount of pressure individuals devout in their beliefs face interacting in everyday society. Allowing her husband to convince her to drop her studies in Theology for some should have triggered initial signs that her spouse had control issues. Thomas’ book promotes a sense of awareness for women faced with this issue to take note of this aggressive form of behavior that can eventually transpire into abuse. Messages of encouragement accompanies Jana’s journey to find a solution to her dilemma. Importantly, the author bases her writings on scriptural revelations found in many parts of the Bible.
I would recommend this book to readers seeking a Christian oriented style of narration that readers from any demographic can utilize on a daily basis. Excessive vulgarity and graphic sexual content is not an issue in reading this book. One reservation for this book is the slow paced dialogue that failed to grasp my attention earlier on throughout my reading. There was also an issue with the overt affection between the two main characters that can come off unrealistic to some readers. I presume this may have been written to display the magnitude of how romantically involved Jana and her husband were in this story. The resolution for every character I felt was appropriate and the climatic points in this story are well worth reading this book in its entirety.
Hmm, I'm going to add this to my list of books to read. It's a little hard to find books like these. Also, books by Kimberla Lawson Roby and Victoria Christopher Murray are great to read too because they are not vulgar but still bring the suspense and drama.