The Earl’s Honorable Intentions by Deborah Hale is the 3rd book in her “Glass Slippers” Christian historical fiction series. In this book we follow Hannah the governess of 3 young children who is trying to convince their military father and new widower, Gavin, to see his duty to his children should be his priority.
I gave this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed the writing style and how quick a read this was. Hale has a way of crafting a story to flow smoothly to get and keep the attention. Her characters in this one aren’t as well developed as in some of her other works, but they are still fairly strong. Furthermore, she does such a good job at bringing us to a satisfying ending.
My biggest frustration with this book is how she handles the theme “fear of failure”. In some ways she does it right, at least in showing character growth in this area; however, she leaves what I consider to be the most important issue unaddressed. When discussing one’s fear of failure you can’t leave out that one of the biggest sources of this fear is the determination to do it “in one’s own strength” and how we must learn to turn to God, trust in His strength and His plan. Hale didn’t even touch on this, even though it was obvious that both of the main characters had decided what they thought was the right thing to do and were determined to bring it about all on their own for at least the first half of the book.
Overall, it was still a nice and enjoyable read if a bit disappointing.
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