Deadly Ties -Review

Deadly Ties by Vicki Hinze was a nice break from otherwise dreary fiction lit that I have been reading for the past month or so (yay for decent books!). Not that I read boring books intentionally. It just sort of happens. In any case, it is a story mainly about Lisa Harper, an emotionally scarred women that wants nothing more than to have a happy and easy life like the other Christians she knows. Things don't work out as planned when her psychopathic (well, I deem him psychopathic) stepfather does everything within his power to try and ruin her life so that she will be permanently separated from her mother. To help defend Lisa against the psychopath Dutch is her (handsome) friend, Mark Taylor.

It's a suspense story with a dose of romance, or maybe a romance story with suspense. I'm not quite sure. Either way, it is not straight-up romance, so it's good. What I loved most about the story is that neither Mark nor Lisa were nonbelievers at the beginning of the story that had to become a Christian by the end of the story so that they might marry each other and be happy. That plot is overdone quite a bit in the Christian romance drama.

Even though the plot is not something that would happen to your average Joe, the emotional struggles are something that other Christians can find themselves going through at different levels. This made the story more intimate for the reader. Instead of just reading about some crazy suspense story or some fantastical romance, we read about two Christians struggling to survive trials. It was nice that they were not super Christians who could handle anything without a single emotional response.

I also enjoyed the plot itself. It was fast-paced enough to keep me interested, but not so fast it was ridiculous. Hinze also made an effort to develop her characters, make them realistic, so that the reader could become emotionally invested in their story. My only problem was toward the ends things got a wee bit cheesy for me. That is to say, the overwhelming girl-power stuff at the end killed it for me. Men not being allowed to cuss without fear of getting hot sauce in their tea, people having weddings planned for them by moms and elderly women friends, wives/girlfriends manipulating their men into submission. It kind of killed it for me. It was only for the last few chapters that this became a problem though, so I wasn't completely turned off from the story. Just mildly.

All in all, it was a good story, and I look forward to reading more from Vicki Hinze.

*I acquired this book from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers