Reviewed by Stephen: 3 out of 10.

Jumping straight to the back of Tested by Fire – Book 1 in the Baxter Series by Kathy Herman…

A bizarre houseboat explosion rocks the close-knit community of Baxter to its core. Firefighters and friends stand by powerlessly as the blazing hull of their neighbours’ home sinks to the bottom of Heron Lake.

Have all five McConnels perished in the flames? Was it an accident? Or murder?

If you read the Amazon reviews and the praise at the beginning of this book, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is a tense thriller with terrific yet subtle Christian morals woven throughout. Before I really get into this review, I have to say that I do not like heavily critiquing creative works of any sort unless I have at least something good to say about them. I know how much effort goes into making something like this a reality, and simply ripping it apart is not constructive to anyone.

So, with that said, let’s go through the redeeming features of Tested by Fire.

• The character Casey and the role he plays – “I am Casey!” He brought a very authentic and comedic flavour and kept my otherwise waning interest from all but disappearing.
• The cat, ‘Pork’.
• Herman’s occasionally poetic writing style. Sure she bows to cliches here and there (who doesn’t), but overall she had some pretty neat descriptions to share.
• Despite being far too blatant throughout most of the book, the morals of this story are still relatively thought provoking. However, the whole moral ethic behind Tested by Fire would have been far more effective painted with a much softer stroke so to speak.

Now I suppose we must wade through the bad. The first thing I kept noticing was that the characters in this story constantly ‘tell’ you that you are reading a Christian book. I prefer Christian fiction, however this is not supposed to be a sermon but a believable story right? The characters are also continuously praying and there are at least four ’sinner’s prayers’, which again is not a terrible crime, but I think it gets a little tedious and the reader would prefer more left to the imagination. But in Tested by Fire, you have no room to think for yourself as it is all spelled out for you.

There was zero tension in this book for me. The plot certainly did not keep me awake at night nor the story kept me turning pages as the praise of the book so ardently promised it would. Practically nothing is skipped in the chronology of this book, and it plays out almost in real-time. This is not a good thing as a lot of the uninteresting occurrences could have been replaced with much more thrilling scenes. I would liken it to a badly edited movie.

There were snippets at the end of each chapter that led to a sort of ‘tie in’ at the end. The trouble was that by the end of the book I was almost groaning at yet another of these unrelenting paragraphs that really did not add anything to the story. Along with the sermon I skimmed, there was a lot of material that simply made this book unnecessarily cheesy.

I don’t know if I finished this book more out of tenacity or plain denial to the truth that it wasn’t going to get any better. But I did finish it. Was the ending worth the effort? Well, to sum this book up in a sentence: it had a halfway decent plot with potential to be a suspenseful piece of Christian fiction but was unfortunately terribly played out. It could have been suspenseful but, well, it wasn’t. Perhaps if this was specifically aimed at pre-teens it would be okay. But sorry, I won’t be reading any more of the Baxter Series in a hurry.

Click here to visit Kathy Herman’s website.