Esther is one of my favourite biblical stories for a number of reasons. On the outside, it’s a rags-to-riches fairytale—unknown girl captures the king’s eye and he makes her his queen. And yet, what a difficult situation for a young Jewish girl to be thrust into! And then there’s that thrilling scene where she boldly approaches Xerxes’ throne, risking death in order to save the Jewish people. I remember being absolutely enthralled the first time I heard the story in Sunday school.

In spite of its potential, this book fell flat for me. For starters, the writing told a lot more than it showed, and in language that did little to stir my senses and emotions. It also presented a rather simplistic and romanticised version of Esther’s relationship with Xerxes. There was no complexity to it at all.

But more than anything else, I felt that this story completely missed the opportunity to delve beyond the surface of the biblical account, both with the plot and the characters. Esther and Mordecai aged as the story progressed, but there was no personal or spiritual growth. The author didn’t explore motives, internal conflict, doubts, or anything else that would help me to think about these characters on a deeper level. 

The Bible also records that Esther “won the favour of everyone who saw her.” How did she win their favour? What gave her the combination of strength, wisdom, and gentleness that enabled her to do so in such circumstances? This story held no answers to those kinds of questions beyond a few lines about how she made polite conversation with the other concubines and made an effort to remember all their names.

There are certainly more historical and day-to-day details compared to the biblical story, and if that’s what you’re looking for in your biblical fiction, then this might be a good choice for you. There’s background to Hadassah’s story, including how she came to live with her cousin; it fills in historical details such as food, travelling to Xerxes’ summer palace at Persepolis, and so on. But it skips over virtually all of the palace intrigue. I mean, a harem of women competing for the king’s favour, assassination plots, political one-upmanship—there’s so much to work with in this story, yet even the climax of the plot with Haman felt like a by-the-by.

As I said, if you’re looking for biblical fiction that adds historical and background detail to the biblical account, then this book could be a good choice for you, but I want my biblical fiction to delve deeper, and this one just didn’t deliver for me.