Keeping It Real

Hope Unashamed by Nadine C Keels is a wonderful contemporary Christian coming of age novel. It is the sequel to Love Unfeigned and I loved it. You do not have to read Love Unfeigned first but I would recommend it. Hope Unashamed is written from the point of view of Arthur and is his version of the story from the previous novel.

The story is split into ‘Before’ written in the first person and ‘After’ written in the third person. The reader is intrigued as the novel begins with ‘After’. I was asking all sorts of questions in my head about the action. The construction of the story was very cleverly done.

Arthur’s character is developed in Hope Unashamed. The reader watches his character grow and mature from his teenage years. I had no strong feelings about Arthur in Love Unfeigned as I didn’t really ‘know’ him but he really took up residence in my heart in this book.

Once again, a major theme is friendships. When we meet a person for the first time, we do not know if a friendship will follow.

The novel has some wonderfully light hearted exchanges of dialogue which were a joy to witness.

We can make our plans but God’s plans are better. We can stubbornly continue to go our way but in the end, we will end up where God wants us to be. We will just have detoured along the way.

I have adored both Love Unfeigned and Hope Unashamed. I can highly recommend these wonderful tales of hope and friendship. Perfect reads for any age.

I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.

JULIA WILSON