Forget the “if you have children” part of the CFBA’s advice on Amy Wallace‘s first book of the Defenders of Hope Series, RANSOMED DREAMS, if you’re happily married, ” it will hit you like a stab in the gut and wrench you with a twist of the knife.” For that matter, if you’ve ever been unhappily married, I suspect the book may have the same effect, but for very different reasons, as I’ll mention more of later.
They’re also right about the book covering depressing territory, Wallace has put on paper more than just her own worst fears, she’s captured mine, and many other’s as well. Adam declared jokingly that it should be illegal for women to read stories about husbands dying.
Wallace captured the emotions so well, I kept seeing my own husband under a white sheet instead of Gracie Lang’s Mark.I liked the vivid portrayal of the lies both she, and FBI agent Steve Kessler had ingested, and spend so much energy trying to refute.
It’s where so many of us are, and the answers they arrive at are, in my opinion, worth wading through the sister running off to California and having two kids with her live-in boyfriend, the embittered-against-god crimes-against-children agent
wearing on his shoulders the weight of every child he fails to return home, and the ill-chosen alcoholic ex-spouse–who conveniently filed for divorce to marry the professor she committed adultery with so as to leave the love interest in the story free to remarry,–and naturally Angela has to show up to file custody claims for a son who has no memory of her.
It’s not for everyone, if you’re not up for a tear jerker, don’t like novels that actually have a point, or have enough of any of the above situations in your life already and would rather not read about them as well, you might want to skip this one. Otherwise, get your tissues out and enjoy.