Seasoned Christian suspense novelist Blackstock disappoints with this
run-of-the-mill romance. The second Christian novel this year (Linda Dorrell's
True Believers is the other) to focus on the renovation of a church and, in
particular, the female protagonist's design of its stained glass windows, this
story features a lovestruck pair of artists who are supposed to be offbeat
and tortured, but in fact are ill-defined and bland. Brooke, a 20-something
stained glass artist who, amid scandal, left her hometown immediately after
her high school graduation, comes back to do a job and face the gossips who
drove her away. Unfortunately for readers, the scandal a misinterpreted hug
between student and teacher has no teeth, and it strains credulity to think
that any town, even the caricaturish Hayden, Mo., could make so much of so
little. Also problematic is that the former teacher, who is only six years
Brooke's senior, is motivated to convert her to Christianity mostly because he
wants to marry her, but would never marry an unbeliever. Stereotypes abound,
including a wealthy, almost mechanically mean-spirited villainess and an
Italian family complete with a dead grandfather whose clich d proverbs are
remembered in over-the-top dialect ("You put-a care and-a love into everything
you do, Nicky, and that's-a quality"). Blackstock generates enough interest
in these characters and their predicaments to keep the pages turning, but the
novel's predictable conclusion is telegraphed from the first page. (Oct.)
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