"Life nearly always puts up a struggle. The strangling of a single creature - even one as small as a partridge - can be surprisingly difficult. Joab's task was the slow strangulation of a city".

Trigger warning: death of a child

I adore an old testament historical fiction and this could be the perfect starter to Anita Diamant's 'The Red Tent'. Although a delightfully engaging novel that offers backstory to old favourites including David and Goliath, the book offered suggestions in context to the tale that ring true in reality. It certainly does "take more than dying to make a stupid person wise" and knowing the future, when we have no power to change it truly isn't the superpower I once considered it to be. That said, I'll probably still visit fortune tellers, but with a bit more reservation.

Batsheba was a beautiful protagonist to grow with, and whilst I struggled to feel anything other than indifference to King David, I appreciated his attempts at redemption. My only disappointment with the book was the three part split. Part one and two flowed smoothly and consistently, but the third part felt irrelevant and outside the scope of a religious historical fiction, despite the time scale. I found myself almost totally detached by the ending, however if the book were only the first two parts, I'd likely rate the book 5/5.

Thank you to NetGalley for the Arc.