Terri Blackstock: Smoke Screen

By Kelly Bridgewater

One father was murdered. Another was convicted of his death. All because their children fell in love.

Nate Beckett has spent his life fighting wildfires instead of the lies and rumors that drove him from his Colorado hometown. His mother begs him to come back now that his father has been released from prison, but it isn’t until he’s sidelined by an injury that he’s forced to return and face his past. But that means facing Brenna too.

Fourteen years ago, Nate was in love with the preacher’s daughter. When Pastor Strickland discovered Brenna defied him to sneak out with Nate, the fight between Strickland and Nate’s drunken dad was loud—and very public. Strickland was found murdered later that night, and everyone accused Roy Beckett. When the church burned down not long after, people assumed Nate set the fire to get even for his father’s conviction. He let the rumors fly and left town without looking back.

Brenna is stunned to learn that the man convicted of murdering her father has been pardoned. The events of that night set her life on a bad course, and now she’s fighting a brutal custody battle with her ex and his new wife where he’s using lies and his family’s money to sway the judge. Brenna is barely hanging on, and she’s turned to alcohol to cope. Shame and fear consume her.

As Nate and Brenna deal with the present—including new information about that fateful night and a wildfire that’s threatening their town—the past keeps igniting. Nate is the steady force Brenna has so desperately needed. But she’ll have to learn to trust him again first.

From Goodreads

My Thoughts:

Suspense is definitely something I read a TON of Terri Blackstock is also an author who I have read everything she has written. So when I heard Blackstock was writing another book, I couldn't wait to get my hand on it. With her newest novel, Smoke Screen, I wouldn't really classify it as a suspense novel. There was an element of surprise in the plot, but it didn't have the spine chilling chase from something or someone that Blackstock's stories usually do. Smoke Screen reminded me a lot of Center of Gravity by Laura McNeil. A story where the main heroine is trying to cope with the loss of a marriage and what it does to her. While the suspense element, trying to find out who really killed the preacher, was there, it didn't really capture the whole story. There was romance between the heroine and hero. Something that started fourteen years ago and tried to resume in the pages of the story. I really liked how Blackstock created a safe and honorable hero who didn't take advantage of a weak woman as she moaned the lost of her marriage. Overall, Smoke Screen reminds me of a contemporary woman's fiction with a hint of suspense. Not a bad novel but not what I was expecting.

I received a complimentary copy of Smoke Screen by Terri Blackstock from Thomas Nelson Publishing, but the opinions stated are all my own.

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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About the Author:

From Amazon

Terri Blackstock is a New York Times best-seller, with over six million copies sold worldwide. She has had over twenty-five years of success as a novelist. Terri spent the first twelve years of her life traveling in an Air Force family. She lived in nine states and attended the first four years of school in The Netherlands. Because she was a perpetual "new kid," her imagination became her closest friend. That, she believes, was the biggest factor in her becoming a novelist. She sold her first novel at the age of twenty-five, and has had a successful career ever since.

In 1994 Terri was writing for publishers such as HarperCollins, Harlequin, Dell and Silhouette, when a spiritual awakening drew her into the Christian market. As she was praying about her transition, she went on a cruise and noticed that almost everyone on the boat (including her) had a John Grisham novel. It occurred to her that some of Grisham's readers were Christians, and that if she wrote a fast-paced thriller with an added faith element, she might just find her niche. As God would have it, Christian publishers were showing interest in the suspense genre, so she quickly sold a four-book series to Zondervan. Since that time, she's written over thirty Christian titles, most of them suspense novels.

Terri has appeared on national television programs such as "The 700 Club" and "Home Life," and has been a guest on numerous radio programs across the country. The story of her personal journey appears in books such as Touched By the Savior by Mike Yorkey, True Stories of Answered Prayer by Mike Nappa, Faces of Faith by John Hanna, and I Saw Him In Your Eyes by Ace Collins. (Taken from Amazon.)