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.