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Communities
Review: Amber Morn by Brandilyn Collins
On a lovely May morning, the “Scenes and Beans” bloggers are gathering together at Java Joint to celebrate S-Man’s new book deal. Their joyous morning is interrupted when three gunmen take over the Cafe, holding all of the bloggers as hostages.
Police Chief Vince Edwards has some tough decisions to make. The gunmen are making impossible demands, but if he doesn’t meet them, the beloved “Scenes and Beans” bloggers will be killed.
In Amber Morn, Brandilyn Collins weaves a riveting story of what happens during a hostage situation. Collins does a superb job of jumping between the scenes in the cafe and what is happening at police headquarters.
Completely believable, Amber Morn will keep you on your toes from start to finish. This is a book you will NOT want to put down, so carve out a nice chunk of time for reading it.
I give Amber Morn 5 out of 5 stars. I highly recommend picking up a copy today!
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Review: My Soul to Keep by Melanie Wells
Psychology professor Dylan Foster has just finished up another year of teaching at Southern Methodist University. She heads to the park to celebrate her friend’s daughter’s 6th birthday, when the unthinkable happens. A little boy is kidnapped in broad daylight.
As Dylan and her friends try to make sense of it all, Dylan is tormented by a figure from her path…the evil Peter Terry. And it seems Dylan isn’t the only one who’s been visited by this sinister soul.
Will Dylan find the truth in time? Will the little boy be returned safely to his mother? And how does a 6 year old girl seem to be so in tune with a kidnapped boy?
My Soul to Keep is the third Dylan Foster book by Melanie Wells. (The first two are When the Day of Evil Comes and The Soul Hunter). Wells is also a private practice counselor, something that comes through clearly in her writing. Dylan foster is a very well developed character, that you can’t help but like, despite her shortcomings.
All in all I really liked My Soul to Keep. I will admit to being a little lost at times. I think reading the first two Dylan Foster novels first would have helped a lot. It took me a while to figure out that Peter Terry was not a real person. My best guess is that Peter Terry was explained in further detail in an earlier novel.
Despite the fact that I was lost at times, I loved the storyline! There was enough suspense to keep me on my toes, and there were some really interesting and sometimes lighthearted sub-plots to keep the story from getting too heavy.
This is definitely a somewhat supernatural suspense novel, reminding me at times of Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, though the author’s style is much different.
Final Verdict: I give My Soul To Keep a B+. It probably would have been an A if I had read the first two novels first. 
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Review: Betrayed by J.M. Windle
Anthropologist Vicki Andrews arrives in Guatemala to research the suitability of Casa de Esperanza for a grant from Children at Risk. No sooner has she arrived in Guatemala than she runs into her younger sister, environmentalist Holly Andrews.
Holly seems troubled about something, but before Vicki can get to the cause of Holly’s worries, Holly turns up dead. When the Guatemalan government dismisses Holly’s death as a street crime, Vicki is determined to get to the truth.
What follows is a mystery that connects Holly’s murder to a recent massacre in a Mayan village to the death of Vicki’s biological parents long ago.
I must admit that I couldn’t put this book down. J.M. Windle, who grew up in Columbia as the daughter of missionary parents, obviously knows a great deal about Guatemalan culture.
It was easy to imaging the events in Betrayed happening in present day. As someone who’s hardly been out of the United States, my eyes were opened to a whole new world.
J.M Windle paints such a picture of the Guatemalan cities, villages, and rainforests, that I could imagine myself right there in the midst of the action.
Perhaps my favorite part of the book was the spiritual undertones. The lessons Vicki learned and reiterated throughout the book are appropriate to anyone, in any walk of life.
If you like a good suspense novel, I highly recommend Betrayed! It will capture your attention and keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end!
Five out of five stars is not enough for this book!
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Review: ADAM by Ted Dekker
I’ve always liked a good suspense novel. In the past I’ve struggled with finding great suspense without horrid language, because Christian authors just didn’t write great suspense. My wait for the perfect, clean suspense novel is now over.
ADAM is the first novel I’ve read by author Ted Dekker. It won’t be my last. It took me about two chapters to get so wrapped up in the book that I couldn’t put it down.
The Plot:
FBI behavioral psychologist, Daniel Clark, is in pursuit of a serial killer by the name of Eve. While on the case, Daniel is killed….but is resuscitated twenty minutes later. Convinced that the key to finding Eve is hidden in those twenty minutes he was dead, Daniel tries with everything he has to regain his memory during that time.
My Opinion:
ADAM kept me on the edge of my seat from the moment I picked it up until the moment I was finished. Dekker brilliantly weaved the plot in between short snippets of “news articles” about a very disturbed young man.
This is not a book to read when you’re home alone. The plot takes several twists and turns that you don’t see coming. It’s suspenseful and realistic, but not to the point of becoming macabre.
If you want a book that is suspenseful, scary, and unpredictable, ADAM is the book for you!
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ADAM by Ted Dekker
This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing ADAM (Thomas Nelson April 1, 2008) by Ted Dekker
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ted is the son of missionaries John and Helen Dekker, whose incredible story of life among headhunters in Indonesia has been told in several books. Surrounded by the vivid colors of the jungle and a myriad of cultures, each steeped in their own interpretation of life and faith, Dekker received a first-class education on human nature and behavior. This, he believes, is the foundation of his writing.
After graduating from a multi-cultural high school, he took up permanent residence in the United States to study Religion and Philosophy. After earning his Bachelor’s Degree, Dekker entered the corporate world in management for a large healthcare company in California. Dekker was quickly recognized as a talent in the field of marketing and was soon promoted to Director of Marketing. This experience gave him a background which enabled him to eventually form his own company and steadily climb the corporate ladder.
Since 1997, Dekker has written full-time. He states that each time he writes, he finds his understanding of life and love just a little clearer and his expression of that understanding a little more vivid. Dekker’s body of work encompassing seven mysteries, three thrillers and ten fantasies includes Heaven’s Wager, When Heaven Weeps, Thunder of Heaven, Blessed Child, A Man Called Blessed, Blink, Thr3e, The Circle Trilogy (Black, Red, White), and Obsessed, with two more…Renegade, and Chaos to be released later this year.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
He died once to stop the killer…now he’s dying again to save his wife.
FBI behavioral psychologist Daniel Clark has become famous for his well-articulated arguments that religion is one of society’s greatest antagonists. What Daniel doesn’t know is that his obsessive pursuit of a serial killer known only as “Eve” is about to end abruptly with an unexpected death-his own.
Twenty minutes later Daniel is resuscitated, only to be haunted by the loss of memory of the events immediately preceding his death.
Daniel becomes convinced that the only way to stop Eve is to recover those missing minutes during which he alone saw the killer’s face. And the only way to access them is to trigger his brain’s memory dump that occurs at the time of death by simulating his death again…and again. So begins a carefully researched psychological thriller which delves deep into the haunting realities of near-death experiences, demon possession, and the human psche.
“As always with a Ted Dekker thriller, the details of ADAM are stunning, pointing to meticulous research in a raft of areas: police and FBI methods, forensic medicine, psychological profiling-in short, all that accompanies a Federal hunt for a serial killer. But Dekker fully reveals his magic in the latter part of the book, when he subtly introduces his darker and more frightening theme. It’s all too creepily convincing. We have to keep telling ourselves that this is fiction. At the same time, we can’t help thinking that not only could it happen, but that it will happen if we’re not careful.”
New York Times best-selling author Ted Dekker unleashes his most riveting novel yet…an elusive serial killer whose victims die of unknown causes and the psychologist obsessed with catching him.
Stay tuned for my complete review of ADAM tomorrow!
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