Sin of a Woman
by Kimberla Lawson Roby
c.2017, Grand Central Publishing
$26.00 / $34.00 Canada
312 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
Nothing’s set in stone.
Few things are. Lucky for you, there’s usually a chance to
change your mind or have a do-over. You can often get
another go at something because few things are that
firmly decided. As in the new book Sin of a Woman
by Kimberla Lawson Roby, you can sometimes have a second
chance.
More and more every day, Porsha Harrington got on Pastor
Raven Jones Black’s last nerve.
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But Raven absolutely had to put up with Porsha, which was
part of the problem: Porsha, inheritor of her father’s
estate and mistress of Raven’s then-husband-now-ex, had
given Raven $250,000 to start New Vision Christian Center.
The partnership would make them both rich. Raven would be
the church leader, Porsha would be the assistant pastor,
they’d both get paid from member contributions and tithes.
That is, as long as Raven could tolerate being near Porsha.
Which wasn’t long.
Years ago, Raven spent time in prison for embezzlement from
the church belonging to her ex-father-in-law, Rev. Curtis
Black. She’d also stolen some money from a loan shark, and
she’d told huge lies all the way to the bank. But that was
all coming around to bite her now, and she needed another
scheme to get everyone off her back. If she could start with
Porsha and make money doing it, well, all’s the better.
So Raven just cooked up another lie.
Something was missing from Porsha Harrington’s life.
She was single, for one. More than anything, Porsha wanted
to be married with a family, a desire that was so strong, it
shocked her. Something else shocked her, too: she realized,
in prayerful moments, that the men she’d mostly chosen were
married ones, and God just couldn’t be happy about that at
all. Instead, He seemed to be leading her to become more
active at New Vision, and that made her heart glad. So did
Dillon, the man she’d cheated with once, who’d now turned
over a new leaf himself.
God would point Porsha into the direction she needed to be.
He had plans for her.
Too bad Raven did, too.
Oh, yes. Now there you go: a novel with scandal,
back-stabbing, nastiness, prayer, gutter behavior,
responsibility and pure entertainment. That’s Sin of a
Woman.
And yet, just because author Kimberla Lawson Roby has put
one of literature’s worst-behaved characters in a book that
strongly features that character’s delicious awfulness
doesn’t mean that the book itself is horrible. No, readers
will be surprised to see that, while this story is sexy and
wonderfully outrageous, it’s also rather tame. Roby veers
away when the bedroom door closes, so there’s nothing
offensive here.
The story is spicy, but it won’t burn your eyes; one
character even turns virtuous, which should tell you plenty.
That obviously sets us up for a sequel, for which readers
will hunger.
If you thought your summer was going to be boring, there’s
still time to change your mind: look for this novel and
enjoy. For you, Sin of a Woman is rock-solid. |