Reviews

The Difficult Saint by Sharan Newman

eososray's review against another edition

3.0

I like that Agnes gets to be a bigger character in this story and the addition of the heretics and why they were heretics was quite interesting.
I'm still finding the drama too much but I'm too invested in the series to stop until I get to the end.

judyward's review

3.0

This historical mystery, set in 1146 in both Paris and Germany, convincingly creates a picture of life in the 12th century which was teeming with political and religious conflict. The religious conflicts were centered on rising anti-Jewish prejudices and violence against Jews that was increasing as a new Crusade was announced by Louis VII of France and also on the attempts to control and eliminate heresy within the Catholic church. Hubert Le Vendeur was born a Jew, but raised as a Christian. However, as he ages, he finds himself yearning to openly identify himself as a Jew and join the Jewish community. His daughter, Catherine, wants him to totally accept Christianity to protect his family and his other daughter, Agnes, will have nothing to do with her family because of her father's Jewish heritage which they refuse to publicly denounce. Well, that's not exactly true. She demands the sizable dowry that her father can provide when she is about to enter into a very advantageous marriage to a German lord. Shortly after her marriage, Agnes is accused of killing her new husband by poison and Catherine and her family travel to Germany to try to discover the truth. The mystery, for me, was a subplot to the information contained in the book about the horrors that individuals were willing to inflict on each other in the name of religion. I was glad that the author included the influential Abbott Bernard le Fontaines of Clairvoux, an historical figure, who denounced violence against Jews and forbid it in territory under his authority.

kristi_asleep_dreaming's review against another edition

3.0

Nicely done historical. Painful to read about the plight of the medieval Jews, and the complacent prejudice of even the "good" christians. The mystery was a little poorly integrated; not really a whodunnit, or at least that wasn't the focus.

julieputty's review

4.0

A couple of weird editing errors marred this book--like calling Margaret's father her grandfather, switching names halfway through a scene, then back, etc. Someone was asleep at the wheel. But the book is solid, if not quite as winning as some of the previous ones. I suspect I'm a little burnt out, so I'm taking a break.