Amy Wallace Reviews

Added May 12, 2007

Defenders of Hope Book 1: Ransomed Dreams

Author: Amy Wallace
Publisher: WaterBrook Press
Available At: Bookstores Everywhere
Publishing Date: April 2007
Genre: Fiction: Christian/Suspense/Thriller
Format: Trade Paperback
Price: $12.99
ISBN-10: 159052747X
ISBN-13: 9781590527474
Reviewer: Phillip Tomasso III

Amy Wallace knows how to tell a story. She knows how to craft characters, set a scene, and how to pull it all together at the end. If you like literary mysteries, Ransomed Dreams is exactly the kind of book you might be looking for. It is detailed, without taking away from the pace of the story. It is the first in a series entitled, Defenders of Hope.

For New Year's Eve, Gracie and her family are going to head just down the road to her parents' house for the celebration. Still working on dessert in the kitchen, she insists her husband and two kids go on ahead. She'll catch up. But it's not just New Year's Eve. It is also her seventh wedding anniversary. Once her family gone, she realizes it would be just as easy to finish baking at her mother's. Following in her car, on the heals of the family van, the unthinkable happens right before her eyes. A person recklessly driving a big truck run her family off the road, and never stops at the scene of the accident.

Years later, after exhausting her efforts to find the person driving the truck, Gracie settles into a routine as a teacher at a private school. Trying to put meaning back into her life, she focuses her love and attention on the children in her class.

Single parent, Steven Kessler is an FBI agent working the in the Crimes Against Children Unit. Unrelenting memories of a failed rescue haunt his waking moments, and hinder his professional career. After a teenager is snatched-the daughter of a powerful person-- Kessler is offered the chance to protect the teenager's younger sibling. Determined to never lose another child, he takes the case.

When Kessler's subject is placed in Gracie's class, the two are drawn to each other. In a renewed attempt to solve the crimes committed against her family, Gracie calls on Kessler's experience and background for help.

Gracie has a stalker. He is closer than she knows. He is responsible for what happened years ago on that fateful New Year's Eve, and he'll stop at nothing to keep the past in the past.

With cases woven together, Kessler and Gracie find themselves in the middle of a plot that thickens, and thickens until it can do little else but come to an explosive, and satisfying ending.

Heartfelt, and emotional, Ransomed Dreams is one of those books that once you start reading it, you can't stop until you've turned over the last page. I look for the other books in this Defenders of Hope series.

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