I was always hesitant to read this book because I tend to stay away from Christian Fiction. But I had never heard anything bad about it, and it is so popular, so I thought...what the hey! I'll give it a whirl! This storyline is so heart wrenching and has so much potential; a story of a man who marries a prostitute. A writer could take this story to the ends of the earth and back. It could be brilliant. Instead, it fell short for me. Also, one of the three things that I believe makes a great book is emotion. I need to feel something. Instead of making me feel what the characters feel through the writing, this author directly tells me how the characters feel, which is tragic. I want to feel the betrayal, guilt, dirt, love, passion through the story. To be blunt, it was just too clean.