While the book has an overall baseline of Joe’s imprisonment and the investigation of his case, just as much of the book was about the various characters’ salvation or testimonies as they learn about Jesus thru Joe, so less thriller more faith journey. While I sometimes like books with an undertone of faith, this felt a little over-spiritualized for what I anticipated reading. 

I will say that I struggled with the constant themes of someone praying and immediately God answered or provided what was asked. While there were a couple instances that this didn’t happen of course, it just felt oversimplified and easy from real life. 

More so, I struggled with both the writing and the characters in this. The flow and dialogue felt mechanical and stilted often, mostly because it lacked tone and emotion, even some responses coming across as callous or rude at times, or just unnatural. 

Ryan and Paige were extremely naive and had no backbone. They told so many people important information without discrimination, seemed to have no sense of analytical thinking on any given subject, and never considered someone should maybe not be trusted. Then if any bump in the road came up they just folded and backed down. 

There was a rather large plot hole at the end that didn’t make much sense but for lack of spoilers, suffice it to say, it was super unrealistic that everyone just accepted it since there would be evidence of it. 

All in all, while I liked the theme of dealing with your past and of faith in prison, the book itself was disappointing for me. 

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are mine.