Honor Redeemed - Loree Lough

THE BOOK:

Highly skilled Search and Rescue (SAR) team leader, Honor Mackenzie, works almost as hard at guarding the dark secrets of her past as she does when training SAR dogs. As for widowed Sun reporter Matt Phillips, not even his former SAR work is as important as protecting his ten-year-old twin boys.  

When a jumbo jet crashes outside Baltimore one cold night, their respective jobs put them face-to-face at the grisly scene--and force Matt and Honor to reconsider the difficult decisions that resulted in their long-standing "single forever" status.

As Matt tries to come to terms with his feelings for Honor, he gets word that she hasn’t reported in since starting the search for a missing child. Reverting to his SAR training, Matt leads the search team as a vicious winter storm bears down on the area. Will he find her in time? And if he does, will they find their way back to each other or go back to living life alone?

MY REVIEW:


Star Rating: **** 

Loree Lough has written over 70 books…but Honor Redeemed is the first one I’ve read by her. And I really enjoyed it! Honor’s job of being part of a Search and Rescue team, and her and Matt’s relationship to other First Responders, really intrigued me. What a sacrifice these people give—just to ensure that people in need have help as fast as humanly possible. Wow!

Out of the two main characters—Honor and Matt—I liked Matt the best. His witty comments and dialog were just so humorous, I chuckled aloud a few times. And his heroic desire to protect—rightfully earning him the nickname “Defender”—made his character really come alive. And Lough did a great job with Matt’s twins, too. Those boys were something else! 

In the first chapter there are two uses of the word “Oh my ***”. Later on, it is used two more times, along with "Oh good L***". This really took me by surprise, for a Christian book to take the Lord’s name in vain, and I admit I was uneasy about what else the book would contain. However, there weren't any other other curse words to be found in the rest of the book…I just really wished they hadn't been there in the first place.

The back of the book felt like it was stretching this about the actual book...the book seemed a lot more slow-paced then what the synopsis eluded to. And the end of the book felt a bit sudden—like everything happened at once, and then there wasn't complete closure. But since this is a series, maybe things will wrap up in the next addition. And while I haven’t read the first book in the First Responder series, I never felt lost or confused about characters or events—Honor Redeemed does very well as a stand-alone novel. I have the first book on my Kindle, and know I will be picking it up sometime in the near future to read more about these character's history.

I reviewed this book for Abingdon Press Fiction via Pump Up Your Book. It was not required that I give a positive review, but solely to express my own thoughts and opinions of this book, which I have done.  


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