Book review: Beneath the Surface by Lynn H. Blackburn

I'm a bit late posting a review of this one (I read it three weeks ago!) but I really enjoyed it!  Here's my review:

Well, it's not what I expected, but it was definitely interesting!  I thought the diving part would play a larger role in the story, but it only is featured at the beginning.  Leigh is drawn into the story when the dive team needs to use her lake access to remove a murder victim from the lake.  But pretty soon the action ramps up when someone makes an attempt on Leigh's life, very nearly succeeding and landing her in the hospital.

So that was twist number one.  This tale takes the cake for twists, which kept me guessing all day long while reading it!  Though I was quite busy, I was able to finish reading it in two sittings simply because I had to know what happened next.

I have to say, I loved having an Asian lady as a main character!  Leigh was adopted from China as a child and raised in North Carolina, and her brother was adopted from Brazil.  I liked this a great deal!  All too often, Christian fiction tends to feature characters that look like they came from Maine, the least racially diverse state!  I'm not one of those that wants every book to force diversity where it doesn't fit, but this was a nice treat.  However, I found myself wishing that Blackburn had described Leigh to us more carefully, because I kept catching myself thinking of her as Vietnamese in feature.

Predictability: Well, very little, other than in the romantic interest!  The killer is a slippery one and hard to think ahead of.

Content: Okay, so this one got really near the edge for me.  If you don't care for really creepy and determined serial killers, make sure to read this one in the daylight!  It's quite intense and the killer does mutilate victims' bodies.

Christian content: a storyline of coming back to God after one's faith has been shaken.

Overall, a solid four star read and a series I will be continuing.  Thanks to the publisher for a free review copy.

Book review: The Illusionist’s Apprentice by Kristy Cambron

Not a fancy picture because I read the ebook version!  Pardon it, please.  But still a beautiful cover!


This week, I read Kristy Cambron’s fourth book, one that is more mystery than she normally writes—exactly what I always like to hear, with my love for mysterious doings in stories!  I gave it four stars. Here’s the review I posted on Goodreads:

I tried to start this a couple times a few months ago and never got past the first chapter or two.  Thanks to a group read, I dove in and soon found myself entirely absorbed.  Then I had the opposite problem of being unable to lay the book down at all!

The mystery of Peale and his double death soon morphs into a bigger mystery of who is calling the shots in a very literal sense.  I enjoyed the atmosphere of the Prohibition years and the unique character Wren is.  Add to that Elliot and his fascination with Wren and her art of illusion, and we have all the elements for a good tale.  The story has several shocker twists that left my mouth ajar.

I didn't care for the lack of specification about what a seance could do (for those who don't know, it is a summons of demons)...it was rather chuckled as a materialistic fraud, but the portion of the story that dealt with actual spiritualism was somewhat dismissed as being unreal.  Spiritualism as a sort of religion wasn't mentioned or defined beyond using the word to describe characters and to mention seances to contact the dead as a mainstay of their philosophy.  Wren and Elliot speak of faith and prayer and make a few comments about "only one man ever rose" as an oblique reference to Christ (which isn't truth anyway, since they are talking of people being summoned from death—Jesus was different because He had the power to raise up from the dead without being summoned—He Himself restored many, including Lazarus, Jairus's daughter, the widow's son, and the saints at His death).  In a story so full of spiritual cloak-and-dagger, I missed Jesus.  I needed to see that clear ending conclusion that the Jesus way was the ultimate answer to the claims of the spiritualists.

Also, several phrases were too modern for the twenties...most notably "gone missing," a 1990s term used more than once.  "Alright" used for "all right" also bugged me.

But, overall, a beautifully written book that is worth a read and very hard to put down!

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a free copy for an honest review.