Not By Might

About the Book:  Set in the Old West, this was the eighth of a series on Christian Western, romance, suspense (loose description) rolled into one.  Although Nurse Breanna Brockman and her husband, John, the US Marshall, are the main characters in this series, nurse Natalie Fallon and Dr. Rex Rawlins are sub characters.  In this episode, John's death is plotted by a gang of outlaws while his wife Breanna is acclimating Natalie Fallon,  the new nurse in the hospital who is still grieving the loss of her true love.  Breanna travels to half a day to a mining town to assist a rural doctor, Dr. Rex Rawlins, with one of his special needs patients.  While there, Breanna, witnesses to a miner and his wife.  All of these threads begin to intersect as the story reaches its climax.

My Thoughts:  I have to admit that the Old West I have read about from other writers and this Old West were  two different places.  The characters in the story were so sickeningly sweet, that the book was hard to read.  The characters who were Christians constantly preached at everyone they met and everything always worked out for the Christians in the story as soon as they prayed.  I love stories of hope as much as the next reader, but I really don't like stories that are so completely unrealistic.  The only positive thing I can think of, is to say that if you are a big Christian-Western fan, you may enjoy the whole Old West scene enough to make this story worthwhile.  This book for me was a painful read that I could not wait for it to end.  Had I not been reviewing this book I would have put it down and counted my losses. Syrupy sweet, condescendingly preachy, totally unbelievable and I doubt seriously if I read another of the Angel of Mercy series.

I received a free e-copy download of this book from the Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group for review purposes.  All opinions expressed are always entirely my own.