Fall Flip

The thing is: I read a lot of romance. And: my faith and spirituality are central to my identity and lived experience, a daily practice and such a high value that I've organized a great deal of my life around my Christian convictions. Like, Christianity isn't a background cultural structure for me. You might call me evangelical about it.
So, I read a lotta romance: wanting a break from stories that weighed down my spirit by not telling the truth about the human experience of sexuality or family or conflict or whatever–and maybe not so many swears because I don't need to store all that in my head especially mid-semester when my middle school students are aggravating!–I timidly decided to try to read gasp! Christian romances.
So I tried this one.
Alas.
Why, if Christianity is central to my identity, do I avoid reading Christian fiction?* Because I think that books should tell the truth about what it means to be human, not twist a story into a a tract where everyone lives happily ever after after employing a magical formula of prayer or faith. It's more complex than that! There's doubt and sin and uncertainty about what God is saying. Fall Flip presents a kind of cultural formulation of Christianity that is NOT congruent with my experience of spirituality. Characters spray a bit then just “know” what to do; the happily ever after doesn't feel earned but kind of an author-produced “ta da” after enough pages had passed by, to reward characters for giving a nod to God. Where was the heroine's anger at God about her husband's death, to pick one instance I felt lacked emotional resonance and realism? I finished the book annoyed; I don't think Fall Flip tells the truth about grief, divine guidence, forgiveness, conflict.
(Also, why were people supposed to care of someone had died in a house? Maybe that's an American cultural thing that I just don't get. Who cares? Humans die! Houses are lived in, and sometimes died in! Big whoop. Weird American culture.)
The thing is: in non-Christian fiction, people can be tropey and gimmicky and plot leaps of logic can happen and I think, “oh well, bad writing” but when a book identifies itself as Christian and uses faith as a central device to help characters grow up, find love, become their true selves and it's tropey and gimmicky it's such a let down.
I'll keep looking; surely there's hope for this genre, right?

*excepting writers who can WRITE; I'm lookin' at you Sayers, Tolkien, Lewis, Robinson,