That’s the mission that The Bride Collector is on. He is out to find the seven most beautiful women in the world and personally deliver them to God for him to choose as His bride.

Brad, an FBI agent that is hot on his trail is determined to catch The Bride Collector, but not without a little help from a very unlikely source: The residents of a mental institution exclusively for the extremely gifted. One of the members, Paradise, has the extraordinary gift of being able to see the last few moments of someone’s life.

The Bride Collector is Ted’s 2nd book with Hachette Publishing, and I have to say, I really like the direction Ted is taking with this publisher. In my opinion, this is Ted Dekker’s best book to date. Sure, I enjoyed The Circle Series, The Paradise Novels and the Lost Books, but I was ready for something completely different. And Ted delivered something completely different, that’s for sure.

Boneman’s Daughters was the first book he wrote for Hachette in which I feel he changed his writing style up tremendously. Everything I loved about Boneman’s Daughters is greatly improved upon in The Bride Collector: The plot keeps you on the edge of your seat and will have you wondering until the very end how the story will resolve; The characters are very well written and like Boneman, we get an excellent insight into the point of view of the bad guy, something rare in fiction from a Christian point of view; and most of all, the spiritual application is even more apparent. In addition, the one aspect that Ted really added in this story is humor. While I know that Ted has a great sense of humor, it really comes out in this story. I had to laugh when I saw his homage to some of his earlier Circle works as well. I don’t want to spoil how he did this, but what a great way to pay tribute. Even the naming of a character pays tribute to Ted’s previous works.

So what can we take home from reading this book? In this story, we discover that some of us really aren’t unlike The Bride Collector in some aspects. How many of us try to impress God with all we do and say, yet fall short of the mark? How many of US would think that Jesus was crazy for all of our ideals that He tossed aside for the sake of loving our neighbors or worse, our enemies?

I highly recommend this novel. If you do not believe that God has a favorite, this may change your opinion.