Category Archives: Angela Hunt

Review: The Offering by Angela Hunt

Title: The Offering by Angela Hunt
Publisher: Howard Books
Genre: Contemporary, Christian, Fiction
Length: 320 pages
Book Rating: B+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

One innocent mistake . . . a lifetime of consequences.

After growing up an only child, Amanda Lisandra wants a big family. But since she and her soldier husband can’t afford to have more children right away, Mandy decides to earn money as a gestational carrier for a childless couple. She loves being pregnant, and while carrying the child, she dreams of having her own son and maybe another daughter. . . .

Just when the nearly perfect pregnancy is about to conclude, unexpected tragedy enters Mandy’s world and leaves her reeling. Devastated by grief, she surrenders the child she was carrying and struggles to regain her emotional equilibrium.

Two years later she studies a photograph of the baby she bore and wonders if the unthinkable has happened—could she have inadvertently given away her own biological child? Over the next few months Mandy struggles to decide between the desires of her grief-stricken heart and what’s best for the little boy she has never known.

The Review:

Angela Hunt’s newest release, The Offering, is a bittersweet novel that raises some thought-provoking questions about surrogacy.

Amanda Lisandra is a wonderful mom to her daughter and very much in love with her husband. Although her original motivation to become a gestational carrier is financial security, she is genuinely happy to help a childless couple become parents. Her decision is well-thought out but there are a few things that she fails to take in to consideration.

Amanda’s husband, Gideon, is absent for much of the story. His job in special ops keeps him away from home fairly often on secret missions. But his love for both his wife and daughter always comes shining through. He is at first hesitant to agree to Amanda becoming a gestational carrier, but after much thought, he eventually supports her decision.

Gideon’s family plays a big role in the overall story. They provide unconditional support for Amanda during Gideon’s numerous absences and their family gatherings are some of the best scenes in the novel. As a traditional Cuban/American family, they are not completely on board with Amanda’s surrogacy and they are the ones to question some of the moral and ethical implications of the procedure.

While The Offering spans about three years, most of the story revolves around Amanda’s decision to become a gestational carrier and her subsequent pregnancy. The first year is covered in depth while the remaining two years are condensed with the highlights given the most attention. The blurb pretty much lays out how things are going to play out, but Angela Hunt throws in some very unexpected and interesting twists and turns.

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