Not a terrible book, but not terribly interesting either. The entire story takes place during one wedding weekend. Five women, ranging from a young single to an elderly widow, deal with love and marriage. The author did do a nice job of discussing Christian faith and values, without be nauseating or unrealistic.

It’s not often that you can categorize a book as both a ghost/horror story and as inspirational fiction. However, Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker teamed up to writeHouse, which is one of those rare books. In this book, Jack and Stephanie’s marriage is on the brink of falling apart, when the couple becomes stranded along a country road in Alabama. With darkness falling, they seek refuge in a nearby bed and breakfast. But what initally seems to be a cozy refuge soon turns out to be a house of horrors. Along with another stranded couple, Jack and Stephanie are soon fighting for their lives.

I wasn’t sure how to think about this book while I was reading it–part Stephen King, part David Morrell, with a healthy dose of obviously Christian symbolism thrown in for good measure. It was hard to settle down and enjoy the story, because I was constantly trying to decide what direction the book was going to take next. Was someone going to die a strange and terrible death, was a new apparition going to appear, or was a new symbolism for sin about to be revealed? Peretti’s books aren’t typically so difficult to figure out, although recently he has taken a turn more towards horror. I haven’t read any of Ted Dekker’s books to know his style. I guess the book can be summed up as: hard to categorize, entertaining to read, and preaching an interesting, yet convoluted message of sin, sacrifice and salvation.

The Prince is the third in Francine Rivers’ series entitled Sons of Encouragement. In this series, she writes biblically based, yet fictional accounts of the lives of Biblical men. (In previous books in the series, she has written about Aaron and Caleb.) While The Prince focuses on the life of Jonathan, I found Rivers’ explanations of why Saul behaved the way that he did more interesting. Basically, Rivers believes that while Saul had good intentions in the beginning, he failed to immerse himself in God’s law and to seek the Lord’s will in making his decisions. Because of this, his kingship was doomed to fail. It was a good reminder for me of the importance of staying rooted in a personal relationship with God and with his Word.

I had high hopes for Dark Water, as I’ve always enjoyed Linda Hall’s books. She so far has been able to avoid the cheesy preachiness that most Christian writers fall into, in addition to writing a fairly good suspense novel. However, Dark Water didn’t quite meet my expectations. While Hall set up a good mystery, the ending wasn’t nearly as exciting or dramatic as I was hoping. She failed to tie together all of the pieces, and there was much suspicious foreshadowing that came to nothing.