Review: A Christian Mystery with A Fast-Moving Plot that Left Me Wanting More
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 11, 2013
I rate this book 3.5 stars.The scene is set from page one: Maggie, our heroine, wakes up in a strange house with a strange man and no memory of how she got there.  Perhaps I watched too much Sex and the City on college, but my first thought was, Well, that's  unfortunate.  I wonder how much Maggie had to drink last night?  My initial impression couldn't have been further from the truth, however.  Maggie was not, on the first page of the book, waking up from a one night stand.  Rather, she (and her unconscious bedfellow) were victims of a kidnapping.  From there, the mystery unfolds.Maggie eventually discovers that her fellow kidnap-ee is Tim, a recently unemployed fellow who, like her, has gumshoe aspirations.  Together, they play amateur sleuth, tracking down leads, staking out pawn shops dressed as homeless people, and jetting across the country in search of answers.  Along the way, their friendship blossoms through their shared Christian faith.  A Christian faith, I might add, that handily dispatched any initial bad-girl tendencies that I presumed Maggie to have at the outset.I thought this book was okay.  The plot moved briskly, and the clues all added up.  The ending brought the mystery to a satisfactory conclusion.  A Christian myself, I did not mind the characters' frequent prayer breaks.  If someone did not know that this is an overtly Christian book, they might be bothered by this, but then again, perhaps there are those who look for such things specifically.  What this book lacked, for me, was depth.  The plot was bare-bones and fairly predictable, and at the end, I didn't feel that I really knew the characters.  As this is a series, I imagine that the relationship between Tim and Maggie will continue to grow in subsequent volumes.  While I am certainly happy for them, I wish I was more invested in their future.Lisa Runge (The Kindle Book Review)The reviewer received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest, independent review, and is not associated with the author or Amazon.