Son of a Preacher Man

Son of a Preacher Man is a beautiful romance with an introspective tone that along with its characters take us into a journey of self discovery and acceptance from their teenage years into adulthood.

It was one of my favourite books this year and I have to start this review by saying I highly recommend it to readers who are looking for a character driven novel with an unforgettable love story.

I don’t usually like modernizations but I have recently started reading different era romances and I’m glad I did because I would have been missing incredible books such as this one.

The story starts in the end of 1950’s in a small town called Orchard Hill where we are introduced to Billy Ray, a young man like no other with a great sense of duty, righteousness, respect and kindness, but a little naive with the ways of the world. He is the son of the preacher and that is evident in his upbringing and personality, making him the perfect catch if you ask me. The story is entirely told from his point of view so we get to know him a little better than Lizzie, the girl who is struggling to cope with the treatment she receives from the townspeople due to her reputation. Her character is hard to define, particularly because Karen Cox did an excellent job with the character developments in this novel. Both Billy Ray and Lizzie’s personality evolve throughout the story as would be expected of young people who are still learning who they are and who they want to be, and that is part of the charm with Son of a Preacher, it takes us into this beautiful path of self discovery and the characters we knew in the beginning of the book are not the ones we will find in the end, in essential they are still the same, but they have matured into sensible loving people.

As you can see the character development was one of my favourite aspects in this book, but the love story doesn’t stay behind in my preference. I loved the fact that it also evolves, it also goes from something sweet into a solid love that will not abate. As the characters grow and change so does their love for one another, and what could have been just a sweet memory from the past, becomes a life changing romance which needs to fight very different battles from what we are used to. Another aspect of the book I loved were the antagonists to this love story, there were a few characters that made it harder, but the true antagonists were the couple’s fears, insecurities and misconceptions. It was so endearing to see how they were both able to be understanding and protective of each other at different times of their lives. These characters were truly hard to resist 🙂

The secondary characters were also well-developed and interesting to read about and it’s even hard to say which one I loved the most because they were all  essential to make this story so good, they were all developed in a way that made them perfectly integrated in the storyline. I loved the Quinlan family and all their members, Lilly reminded me a little of Lydia but in a charming way and Mrs Quinlan remains a mystery to me, but it was their family’s circumstances, their life, and how they responded to their difficulties that made me love them so much.

We can’t call this story a P&P variation, but there are many similarities in the characters we find throughout the story and readers will be happy to see Mrs Gardiner and Richard’s interference in it or even smile at the similarity with which the male character saves the female character’s younger sister.

Son of a Preacher Man is like no other book I have ever read, the character development was impressive and had a magnetic pull to it, the romance was believable, true, inspiring, life changing and passionate, the writing was addictive and the message of hope, forgiveness and love that is transmitted throughout the novel made it one of the best books I’ve read this year. It will most definitely be on my favourite list from 2018 and I am sure I will not forget this story in the next few years 🙂

“I don’t want to erase it, because our pasts led us to the here and now. What we have to learn is how to accept the past for what it was and change our separate paths to one we can walk together”

You can find Son of a Preacher Man at :

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk