"Silence in the Dark" by Patricia Bradley

Silence in the Dark (Apr. 19, 2016) by Patricia Bradley.*

She was a runaway fiancée. When Bailey Adams doubted how good a man could truly be, she high-tailed it out of Logan Point and went to Chihuahua, Mexico, as a teacher/missionary. That was two years ago, but she will soon return to Logan Point, Mississippi, to visit family while also accompanying four-year-old Maria Montoya to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. Bailey is Maria’s teacher, and she is being raised by her uncle, Joel McDermott, since both her parents are deceased. Plans change the day they are scheduled to fly to the States. Joel is abducted, and Bailey and Maria flee. Bailey is fairly resourceful, but she wisely accepts Danny Maxwell’s help.

            Danny is Bailey’s ex-fiancée. He still loves her, and it is highly probable that she still loves him. But she’s been living in the shadow of the person she thinks she should be, that being a person that is “good enough” for God. Despite what she tells the women during Bible Studies and tea parties, she does not necessarily practice what she preaches. She feels like a fraud, and now her life is in danger on top of it. People from the city’s drug cartel, La Calatrava, are after her or Maria, and she suspects that Father Horatio is part of the cartel, or at least has ties to them. But Danny is determined to stick with her and protect her. He’s teamed up with Angel Guerrera, well-known to the small businesses of the town as the “Angel of the Streets.” He and his men have their own beef with the Calatrava, and it is very personal. A waitress named Solana – with a painful past of her own – finds herself with the group after her assistance aids in the safety of Bailey and Maria.

            The danger follows them to Logan Point. As does one Sergeant Quinten Chavez of the Policía Federal Ministerial (PFM). Bailey knows that her usual course of action is to run, but she can’t run this time. Can she face what is coming, especially with Danny so near?

            The novel had a dramatic start, and the story was fast-paced from there. I appreciated my first story from Patricia Bradley, and I also appreciated that I did not feel lost to tons of back-story, considering this is Book 4 in the Logan Point series. This Christian fiction, romantic suspense novel was a thrill of a ride with love and resistance, hope and despair, faith and doubt, tension, danger and not always safety in numbers. Bradley tells through story that faith doesn’t generally come easy, nor does it come without troubles. When Bailey considers herself a fraud, it isn’t over one incident. No. The first trouble “was just meringue on the pie.” And so perhaps that is the case for all of us at times, though hopefully in far less dramatic and dangerous fashion than what Bailey goes through!

* Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Revell Books. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions are expressly my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”