Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

My niece is extremely competitive. She knows it and will readily admit it. Her husband’s coworker loaned him a book to read and while reading it, my niece felt compelled to read over his shoulder. Racing him! Of course, she won ... she always wins, but in the process, she read a pretty good book which she recommended to me.
Granted, this is a fairly cheesy novel, written in an adolescent style making it seem as if it were geared toward lonely teenage girls ... think Pretty Woman meets Little House on the Prairie.
The message was beautiful, however, and the story kept me going back even when I knew what was coming next or felt irritation at the stubbornness of the characters.
Although when I was seventeen I was into vampires and ghost stories, this actually would have been an excellent book for me to have read.