When the Smoke Clears, by Lynette Eason (Revell, 2012)

Alexia, Serena, and Jillian were inseperable until high school graduation—when Jillian fled, terrified by something she couldn’t tell even her closest friends. Alexia left too, desperate to get away from an abusive home life. Serena and Alexia kept in touch over the years, but neither of them know how to find Jillian.

Now, ten years after graduation, Alexia nearly dies fighting a fire—because her equipment was sabotaged. While she’s off work, she decides to go home to visit Serena… and face her estranged mother, since the woman is in hospital.

Can her mother really have changed, like Serena says? And what’s with Serena, Alexia’s mother, and even Hunter Graham (last seen making eyes at her at graduation, now a handsome-and-single cop in town) telling Alexia that God loves her? That He thinks she’s worth something?

More urgently, who keeps trying to attack her? And why?

When the Smoke Clears is a thriller first, with romantic and spiritual sub-plots. It’s also book 1 in the Deadly Reunions series, and while this book’s main plot resolves satisfactorily, the man who’s after Jillian is only getting more desperate. And Alexia’s and Serena’s lives may still be in danger.

Definitely a series I want to keep reading.

Lynette Eason is a multi-published author and a trusted name in Christian suspense. For more about the author and her books, visit lynetteeason.com.

[Review copy from my personal library.]