Act of Faith – Erica James

The very second paragraph of this book worried me:

‘Oh, get a life you silly little man,’ she muttered, bringing to an end the ramblings of the out-of-his-tree caller from Redditch – a crank who had been advocating a world economy based on homespun bartering. Honestly, was there anything worse than a born-again down-shifter?

The alarm bells were ringing at this point and I read on with some trepidation. I’m very pleased to say though that once I’d got over this first obstacle Act Of Faith turned into a thoroughly enjoyable book – if a tad predictable at times.

It tells the story of Ali Anderson, a woman who split with her loving husband Elliot after the death of their young son Isaac. The story has some tragic turns which did bring tears to my eyes, but at other points in the book I found myself wanting to shout at Ali for some of her stupidity. There were a couple of twists in the story, but at the stage where I was expecting the biggest twist of all, nothing happened and the story followed the route that I was being clearly set out.

There is also quite a bit of discussion of Ali’s best friend Sarah, and her very religious husband Trevor. I have to admit that I found some of these sections of the book a bit boring – possibly because religion isn’t something that I’m particularly interested in and I can find very frustrating. The book certainly looks at the different types of love that can exist and it was certainly interesting towards the end of the book to see what can happen when these collide.

I picked this book up in a charity shop, somehow recognising author Erica James’ name. Having had a look at her other books online though I don’t think that I’ve actually read any of them. I’ll be interested to see if they are formulaic or not, as I do find some of these “chick-lit” authors can be a bit that way. Another author for me to look out for when I’m next in the charity shop.