Book review: Angel

by Laura Lee

★★★★

An uncomfortable page-turner. I’m glad I read it, but glad to be finished. Not that the book is distasteful; it was just a foreign and unsettling topic for me. But that’s why I asked Lee for a review copy.

Lee’s protagonist is a middle-age minister who has lost his wife, and suddenly finds himself attracted to a young man, despite the church’s disapproval. They find it necessary to hide their friendship, which is both demeaning and spiritually draining. Shipwreck seems inevitable.

Lee writes with insight and flounce, and you just can’t put the darn thing down. The language is a bit crude in places, but appropriately so, as it does define the characters and our minister’s descent/growth (I’ll let you decide which). The story ends appropriately, which is all I dare say on that matter, except to promise it will leave you thinking about the not-so-subtle discrimination against sexual orientation in today’s Christianity, and the emotional scars and marginalizing it causes.

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