Severed Trust by Margaret Daley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
- I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
In the small town of Summerton, life is normal. Kids go to school, parents go to work . . . and people pop prescription pills for fun. Kelly discovers the hard way that being accepted into a pill party isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially when another attendee ends up dead. But she's too scared to talk, not even to her best friend Lexie, and certainly not to Lexie's Uncle Ethan who just happens to be a Texas Ranger. Secrets and lies pile up and Ethan is desperate to get to the bottom of the mystery, especially before someone he loves gets hurt.
This is one of those books with a plot so true-to-life that it's terrifying. Pill parties are real. Kids don't just take heroine or cocaine to get high. It can just be a combination of pills snitched from their parents. So, in this regard, Margaret Daley addresses a very real issue that tends to get glossed over in literature, even Christian lit. Prescription drug addiction is real and it can ruin your life.
Now, on to the book itself, I couldn't really put it down. I started it sometime early this morning, before church, and just finished it now. Which means that the story was compelling enough to keep me reading. However, I will say that I think Ms. Daley had a few too many main characters. She changes perspective several times to represent these characters and it was hard for me to remember who was related to who and what their connection was to someone else. Also, I think it climaxed too quickly and with too easy of a resolution. I'm not sure what I expected, but not everything tidily wrapped up, well mostly wrapped up since I'm still not sure about one guy's motive in showing up again in his ex-wife's life.
Ultimately, the book would have been better had it been written strictly for teens. Because I read a lot of teen lit, I found Ms. Daley's voice to match teen lit better than adult. I connected with Kelly and Lexie much better than her adult characters. The teen voice just worked. I would like to see what she would do with a book written solely for teens. I think she would wow the Christian market and I hope she considers it someday.
On the whole, Severed Trust was a very compelling read about a terrifying subject, made all the more scary because it's real.
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