ACRBA Review: Twice Stolen by Susanne Timpani

4 - 8 April

Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance

is introducing

Twice Stolen

(Armour Books, 14 February 2016)

by

Susanne Timpani

About the Book:

After the death of his grandmother, Dimitri finds he's been lied to most of his life. His journey into the Outback to unravel the mystery of his identity leads to an encounter with Leah, a nurse with a tragic secret.

About the Author

Susanne is married, has four beautiful children and works as a community nurse with children and families. Themes of her work and her faith appear in her writing. 

Susanne is the author of the blog, 10 Minute Daily Retreat. These twice weekly reflections on scripture can be read via:

http://susannetimpani.blogspot.com.au/ 

https://www.facebook.com/10MinuteDailyRetreat

Her first novel, Twice Stolen, was released in February 2016. It fits the genre of Inspirational Fiction, has Australian Aboriginal themes and is flavoured with a sprinkling of Medical Romance. 

Twice stolen won the CALEB prize for an unpublished manuscript.  The book is published by Armour Books

My Review

Dimitri is an aspiring photographer who is also looking to discover more about his heritage, having lost his parents in a plane accident when he was a small child. He wins a short-term apprenticeship with a landscape photographer which takes him to the Bilyaj region, on the edge of the Outback—where his parents died. Leah is a student midwife assigned to the Bilyja region, where she meets the handsome Dimitri, but she’s nervous about getting involved with him—especially after she has a health scare.

The story revolves around a lot of secrets, which makes it difficult to describe without giving away spoilers. It also made parts of the story frustrating for me. Dimitri’s grandparents lied to him and it was never explained why (and I don’t understand how they got away with one of the lies). The ongoing conflict between Leah and Dimitri could have been solved with a conversation (while I understood why Dimitri stayed away from Leah, his initial assumption was ridiculous. So ridiculous it took me a while before I worked out what he’d thought).

There were issues about timing that either didn’t make sense, or skipped forward in time without adequately covering what one of the characters had been doing in the intervening timespan. I noticed this especially around Leah’s health scare. And I thought Leah needed her head examined (but to tell you why would be a spoiler).

Overall, the idea of Twice Stolen was excellent, but there were too many problems for it to be a truly outstanding novel, at least for me.

Thanks to Armour Books for providing a free ebook for review.