Book Review: Ever Present Danger

This week I'm participating in a blog tour for Kathy Herman's new release Never Look Back, which is the second in the Phantom Hollow series. The first book, is Ever Present Danger and the publishing company was kind enough to send it as well as the 2nd when I agreed to participate in the blog tour. So to keep things in order, I'll start with book one.

Ever Present Danger introduces us to Ivy Griffith and her seven-year-old son Montana. At the end of her senior year of high school, Ivy got into boys and drugs and watched as her boyfriend and the rest of their friends killed a classmate and hid the body while she was too stoned think clearly enough to object. She spent the majority of the next ten years doing whatever it took to try and forget and move beyond the guilt for having sat by and agreed to help these friends keep their secret.

Now, having finally gotten clean with the help of her neighbor Lu and with no other options, Ivy has returned to her hometown, bringing along the son her parents didn't know she had and Lu.

What follows is a well written mystery as new murders take place and the sheriff continues to investigate the happenings from ten years previous.

This is a well woven story. The characters are engrossing and the pages fly by as the mystery unravels with enough twists and turns and sub plots to keep the breakneck pace through to the end. Even more than that, however, I really liked the fact that this book tackles some tough issues for today as Ivy struggles with the importance of truth over comfort and the repercussions of allowing Biblical absolutes to become muddied by the cultural trends of today. And while those are clearly discussed and well handled, the book never comes across as preachy, nor does the plot or writing suffer in any way.

This book is fabulous reading for young adults and adults alike on the merit of the story alone. But it would also be a great high school youth group or adult book club book (it even contains some well thought out discussion questions at the back to help address the larger issues that the book goes over.)

4 stars out of 5