Absolution by Missy JohnsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Final Score - 4 Stars!
This is my 2nd standalone by Missy Johnson I've read. This book was so easy to get into, due the "taboo" factor as I'm on a kick for it as of late. From the moment you start reading the, you're immediately immersed in the story.
In the beginning, years before the main part of the story takes place, we meet a family suffering from the death of a sister/a daughter. She got caught up in the wrong crowd, which had dire consequences - which ultimately ended her life. The event caused a domino effect on rest of her family. Hannah (the main character/heroine of this story) is 10 yrs old at the time and makes the connection that her's sisters involvement with Declan James is what has led them all to suffer.
This family is barely holding on, when tragedy strikes again leaving them all devasted in it's wake. Hannah now has become the strength she feels she needs to be for the remaining family members, left to face life without their loved ones.
Then the story jumps 14 years: Hannah Masters is now 24 yrs old and has landed her dream job straight out of University. She works in Child Protection, a job she not only loves but feels its more of a calling as she's helping to better/enrich the lives of children who have fallen into similar circumstances as she had. But while she lives and breathes her job, its also breaking her heart to know that some kids just can't be saved.
After a particular trying case lands in her lap - the case of a child with an addict mother who constantly returns to her abuser - she’s led to the church doors to a priest named Declan James. The same Declan James she hold responsible for her sisters downfall and her family's demise.
After the the initial shock Hannah has at seeing Declan again, her world comes crashing down around her. How can this man now a priest be responsible for the death of her sister all those years ago? Has he really changed? And how in God's Green Earth does the one man that should be forbidden, become the one man that you end up falling in love with?
Brought together through circumstance and having to work together as a unit brings Hannah and Declan closer to each other than either of them we're prepared for.
The book is broken down into dual perspectives - Declan, the Priest & Hannah - the Child Services Case Worker. Both are struggling with having been brought together because of a child both care deeply for and a past that seems determined to swamp them both under the weight of its sorrow.
I can't say how it ended - only that I was shocked at how well the author brought the story together and made a plausible ending. I didn't want it to end - so caught up in the story, I never wanted Hannah & Declan's journey to end. This book ... *le sigh* The power of forgiveness of one's self and of others is powerful and the central theme of this book.
View all my reviews
Comments