Out of the Ashes Book Review

                Out of the Ashes by Tracie Peterson & Kimberly Woodhouse is the second book in the Heart of Alaska series. Although I have not read the first book in this series, In the shadow of Denali, this is a series where you don’t necessarily have to read them all. That being said, I usually prefer reading series from start to finish, but in this case I didn’t.

                I sort of have mixed feelings about this book. And most of those feelings are not good ones. I have read several Tracie Peterson books in the past and have enjoyed them.  They tend to be light, quick reads, which is great. But Out of the Ashes just wasn’t doing anything for me. It defiantly had potential in the beginning. But once I got further in to the story I became disinterested.

                When I read the synopsis of this book I was assuming that they story would focus around the main characters, Jean-Michel and Katherine. But instead most of the book is centered on the characters from book one, Cassidy, Allan, and others. When I just wanted to read about Katherine and Jean-Michel, it would shift to other characters that frankly, I didn’t care about. I get that it is a second book in the series and that the characters carried over to this one, but I would have liked the influence to have heavily been on Katherine and Jean-Michel, with the other characters sprinkled in. I also felt like there were a lot of unnecessary characters that the story didn’t really need to keep it flowing.  

                So I had a lot of problems with this book unfortunately. I liked the “main” characters Katherine and Jean-Michel, but the others not so much. I was more interested and Katherine and Jean-Michel’s past and felt like that could have been delved into deeper and made for more of a substantial read.

I received this book from Bethany House for my honest opinion.