Rating: 3 1/2 stars
When Katie Converse, a seventeen-year-old Senate page home for Christmas break, disappears while walking her dog, Special Agent Nicole Hedges, Federal Prosecutor Allison Pierce and Reporter Cassidy Shaw, life long friends who call themselves “The Triple Threat Club” are on the case. A hard-working straight-A student, with political ambitions, Katie’s acceptance into the page program was a dream come true.
However, an anonymous blog Katie had been writing about her life in the program reveals pieces of her secret life, which included an illicit affair with a much older and married Senator. When the family dog returns home limping and bloody the search for Katie intensifies, but the search for answers only brings more questions.
Short of bad names chosen for the characters -- such as Katie Converse and her lab mix Jalapeño -- up to this point, I’ve never had to question a dog’s name. The other protagonists were likeable enough and their personalities different enough to keep them interesting, yet it still made sense that they would be friends. However, I had a hard time understanding how Cassidy Shaw contributed anything substantial to the mix, since she seemed to be standing around most of the time trying to catch any bone of information her friends would throw her.
As with all Thomas Nelson books, there is a Christian element; however, many of the other novels I’ve reviewed from them managed to fit the God stuff in quietly and relevantly. By the end of the book, Face of Betrayal seemed to be trying to reach some type of “give it over to God” quota, which came off as a bit preachy. Although the story did have a bit of the can’t-put-the-book-down quality, random topics such as teen pregnancy, domestic violence, alcohol abuse, homelessness and others were all thrown in the mix without any real relevance or direction, which only served to derail the story and confuse the reader as to the point of their inclusion.
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Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (April 7, 2009)
ISBN-13: 978-1595547057