Taken by Dee Henderson

... Were you starting to think this blog was dead? I don't blame you! But I have a somewhat valid excuse. This last book by Dee Henderson was HUGE! However, I thoroughly enjoyed spending the majority of my reading time this month going through this novel. The second part of my excuse for the blog inactivity this month was that I was finalizing the plot lines for my fist novella project - so excited!

With no further ado...

Back Cover: Abducted at the age of sixteen and coerced into assisting the Jacoby crime family, Shannon Bliss has finally found a way out. She desperately wants to resume some semblance of normal life, but she also knows she has unfinished business to attend to. She might have enough evidence to put her captors behind bars for a very long time.

When Shannon contacts private investigator Matthew Dane, a former cop, to help her navigate her reentry into society, he quickly discovers that gaining her freedom doesn’t mean her troubles are over. If the Jacoby family learns she is still alive, they’ll stop at nothing to silence her.

If justice is to be done, and if Shannon’s life is ever to get on track again, Matthew will need to uncover exactly what happened to her-even if it means stirring up a hornet’s nest of secrets.

Review: Dee Henderson crafts a beautiful relationship between Shannon Bliss and Matthew Dane. What begins as a business relationship takes the slow but deliberate turn towards friendship and then upwards into something even stronger. The male characters in all Dee Henderson’s novels are filled with integrity, make their choices based on honor and God’s will, and they respect the needs and desires of the women in their lives more than their own. If only real life was filled with more men like the fictional ones created in her novels.

I appreciated how Dee chose to write this book from Matthew Dane’s point of view only. Her POV decision really contributed to the overall suspense of the story. I did not feel like I lost any connection to Shannon by not being “in her head”. Dane is a perceptive character and his experience with his own daughter’s abduction allows him - and the reader - to discern what is happening in Shannon’s mind.

The point I most appreciated about this book was the clear, concise answers that Shannon gave Matthew in reply to some of this world’s most challenging questions. Why does a just and good God allow evil to happen? How does your faith survive when faced with something as brutal as an eleven year abduction? How could she still love and trust God? The book is worth reading to simply hear her answers to those questions. I am not sure if these replies were of Dee’s own making or if she had a wise pastor helping her, but the truths spoken on these pages made me think and truly struck a chord within me.

In regards to the story line, I found it engaging, enjoyed seeing the characters from Dee’s previous novels, and felt that the action and suspense carried well and consistently throughout the book. There were no ‘dead’ sections in this novel. The Jacoby crime family plot line was well thought out and researched and I found Shannon’s abduction and her years of captivity very believable.

An excellent book provided by Graf Martin Communications and Baker Publishing House