Review by Melchi Asuma -- The Vision of Jenny Merkus

Melchi Asuma · Post by **Melchi Asuma** » 06 Jul 2019, 08:42

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Vision of Jenny Merkus" by Hadassa Mor.]

4 out of 4 stars

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I was already hooked and enchanted by both Jenny Merkus' story and Hadassa Mor’s writing a few pages into reading the book. This novel, The Vision of Jenny Merkus, is a historical fiction work that is written so magnificently and creatively; it is easy to get lost into the detail and forget that there is a lot of reality in the book.

Jenny Merkus was born in the Netherlands to a wealthy and politically powerful governor, Peter Merkus. His dad had many children but quite unluckily for her, she was not born to a legitimate wife of Peter’s. However, Peter loved Jenny’s mother so much that she decided to actually formalize their relationship and accept Jenny as a royal daughter. Thus was her life beginning. Despite the wealth and power, however, Jenny did not lead a happy childhood. Her dear father passed away while she was only four years old and thus, they had to move to Italy. Her mother then gave her away as she had many children to look after. This was how she ended up living with her uncle who raised her to be a staunch Christian and a generous giver. Her Christian upbringing is what leads her to be the woman she is - devout, faithful, generous, wise, and even a bit naive. This book details her life as a grown woman who believes that she saw a vision from Jesus asking her to build him a home for his second coming. Many doubt her, and many scorn her but she is a lady with a purpose.

I have already stated earlier that I was simply entranced by Hadassa Mor’s writing. The book was well narrated and written. The level of detail put into the story was just superb and made me visualize the story easily and quite fondly. The writer also avoided religious jargon and where they had to be used, they were explained and illustrated quite well. The narration was generally quite compelling which made it near impossible for me to put the book down.

That said, I had just one problem with the narration. I felt that it was overdone. Many parts of the book and chapters could have been easily done away with. The story took quite some time to pick up and even once it had, there were still some bits where the author took to unnecessary explanations of events and time periods that were not relevant to Jenny’s story. They were, however quite informative. I learned a lot about past Israel, for example.

The vision of Jenny Merkus is a truly wonderful read. Jenny Merkus was a remarkable woman to whose story the author did justice. The story was well told. I found no grammatical errors as it was obviously very professionally edited. I absolutely have to rate it the full 4 out of 4 stars. This is a book that I would recommend highly to religious books lovers, avid readers of biographies and autobiographies, and a general audience of historical books. However, if you typically tend to avoid religious books, this might not be an interesting read for you.

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The Vision of Jenny Merkus
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Erin Painter Baker · Post by **Erin Painter Baker** » 08 Jul 2019, 15:54

i have not been reading a lot of historical fiction lately, but I do love when an author is able to really meld a true story with bits of fiction. I'll have to consider picking this one up.