Hiding Places by Erin Healy
The Harrison lodge is full of hiding places where young Kate can discover all the secrets no one wants her to know.
About this book: (from the publisher) Eleven-year-old Kate keeps her knowledge to herself—one sister’s stash of marijuana, the other’s petty cash pilfering, her grandfather’s contraband candy bars. She protects her mother and Gran, too, screening out critical comments from the hotel suggestions box. But suddenly the stakes are raised; her grandfather’s best friend is murdered the day after Kate heard the two men arguing.
At the same time, far from the quiet mountain resort, a homeless man sees a robbery gone wrong . . . a gang member seeks revenge for the death of his son . . . and a boy chooses the worst time to wield spray paint on a store window. In a strange and spiraling sequence of events, their disparate worlds collide at Harrison Lodge.
Kate offers shelter to one of them, unaware of the terrible consequences to the family she loves. But people can hide in all kinds of ways, sometimes even in plain sight . . . and some secrets are just waiting to be exposed.
About the author: (from her website) Erin Healy is the bestselling co-author of Burn and Kiss (with Ted Dekker) and an award-winning fiction editor for numerous bestselling authors. Erin is the owner of WordWright Editorial Services, a consulting firm specializing in fiction book development, and she is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers and the Academy of Christian Editors. Her novels include such thrilling stories as Never Let You Go, The Baker’s Wife, and Stranger Things. She lives with her family in Colorado.
Genre: Fiction/General
If this book were a movie, I would rate it: PG for references to violence (none explicit)
Why this story mattered to me: for its celebration of family, redemption, and the hope of second chances
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My take: Whenever I start a new Erin Healy novel, I know I’m in for a very smart read, and in that regard, Hiding Places met every expectation. Per usual, this one is filled with detailed plotting, descriptions that are a mind-boggling in their complexity, and highly complicated characters. As a writer myself, I’m awed by in-depth understanding of the human psyche needed to construct characters like these.
Hiding Places is like another of Healy’s novels, Stranger Things, in that it contains no overt “God” messages–which is interesting considering that Thomas Nelson, a Christian publishing house, published it. (You’ll note, in fact, that in defining its genre, I did not include “Christian” or “Inspirational,” because while it contains these underlying themes, they are subtle to non-existent.) Unlike Healy’s previous novels, this one does not include supernatural elements–other than, of course, the application of grace and redemption, which are inherently supernatural.
For all that it has going for it–and from a literary standpoint, that is a lot–I can’t say I loved this one. Which has nothing to do with the quality of this story (let me be clear on that point), but rather its content. The two main viewpoint characters are an eleven-year-old girl making her way among a highly dysfunctional family, and a hardened-but-with-a-heart gang member–neither of which I found easy to relate to. The story itself also had a bit more grit than I enjoy, which made it tough at times to stick with it. However, I will say it was worth it in the end as the conclusion is poignantly hope-filled and satisfying without being saccharine. This, I liked.
Thanks to Book Look and the Thomas Nelson Fiction Guild for providing me a free copy to review. All opinions are mine.
After words: Have you read any of Erin Healy’s novels? Any favorites?