Ok, not the first book I read to be reviewed but the first review I finished and am mostly happy with. I reviewed it on amazon as well.
It took a long time to get to reviewing this book. I stayed up all night to read it because I literally could not put it down.I don't read much Christian fiction because I find it falls into 2 general categories; spiritual warfare (that has very little bearing on 'reality') or the morality that's about as filling as a blueberry muffin. It tasted good and you felt better about yourself for eating it but you should have just had the donut, it had fewer calories and you'd at least have been honest with yourself about your eating habits.
This book was not your average Christian morality tale and it is very much based in reality. The protagonist is a very pregnant, very broke, very worried young woman who has been given the gift of prophecy. Her husband wants her to keep it quiet and stay out of trouble. She has every reason to just stay out of everything that she finds out but, despite her very great fear, she does the right thing. Not only does she do the right thing, she forces many of the people around her to question what they believe.
Rohrbough doesn't spend a lot of time on characterization but she doesn't need to. It's in the characters that she shows the makings of a master wordsmith, doing what every writer is told and few can actually manage; show, don't tell. The villain of the piece is a very modern one, with motives that are familiar and at the same time alien to most of the people who will read this book. The other characters are also familiar faces to most in the Christian community and that should be very frightening.
The book is thrilling and chilling. It will force you to answer the question "what would I have done?" The answer, for most people, will not be very comforting.
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