A Vote of Confidence by Robin Lee Hatcher

This is a Christian romance. I read it as an e-book (bonus: it was free!). There seem to me to be a wide variety of types of Christian romances. There are the ones that are full of church and scriptures and prayer and that have no chemistry between the main characters. Ugh. There are ones where church and scripture and prayer are kind of "there"--appended, but not necessary, to the plot. There are the heavy handed ones, with a hammered home message all about God. And there are the ones where the religious message is gentle and natural. And then there are my favorites: those where the main characters' relationship with deity, their study of scriptures and attendance at church actually inform the plot--our protagonists change through their pursuit of God's will. Their actions throughout the book illustrate their good characters and subtly teach the reader. AND there is good chemistry between our main boy and girl. These are the ones I like best.

This book was one of the type where the Christian stuff is appended to the story, but not really necessary for plot progression. The Christian part just made the story clean and very readable. The plot was actually about an emancipated (but Godly) woman of the early 20th century. She runs for office against two other candidates. She learns to love one of them. It was an entertaining story full of very likeable characters. The messages--about the strength of women, about misjudgments and power misused, not to mention the Christian message--were all pretty lightweight. It was an enjoyable book. I'd like to read the next in the series (but it's not free and I haven't decided if I want to pay for it!).