Book Review of Poisoned by Patricia Hartman

Book Review of Poisoned by Patricia Hartman

This suspense novel is about justice and has a little redemption in it. One of the minor characters takes a turn for good and the main character draws closer to God. It’s a Christian suspense novel, so the content is clean. No profanity, no overt sex and most violence is off page. There is at least one shooting scene that goes into a little bit of graphic detail.

The story is about Dr. Julie Wheeler, a veterinarian who lives and practices in a small West Virginia town. Dr. Wheeler has a very bad day. Most of this 421 page book is one twenty-four-hour period. Her husband is the prosecuting attorney, and he has disappeared. Dr. Wheeler cannot get ahold of him. Strange things start to happen. A dog is dropped off who has been poisoned and the owner rushes out and never calls back to find out how the dog is. Dr. Wheeler is followed by one of the deputies in town, one she doesn’t know and doesn’t recall her husband ever mentioning. She starts hearing rumors about her husband and his gorgeous assistant. Things continue to escalate throughout the day reaching a life and death climax.

I don’t want to give away any more of the story. It’s a story with several good twists. Much of the story is from Dr. Wheeler’s point of view. In my opinion, the entire story should have been from her point of view. It would have set up a situation of an unreliable narrator. As the story is told from some other points of view, the reader knows more about what is going on than the main character. This takes away from the suspense.

There are two other issues I have with the book. First, it’s 421 pages long. That is about one-hundred pages too long for a suspense novel by a new fiction author. And for this story, it’s definitely at least one-hundred pages too long, no matter who wrote it. We get a lot of replays of Dr. Wheeler’s inner thoughts, the same ones. She obsesses over the rumors that her husband was having an affair with one of his assistants. This alone is fine, but we see this obsession over and over.

The second issue is the book suffers from a lack of copy editing. There were a lot of grammatical errors as well as a couple story errors.

Other than the two issues, the story kept me wanting to read, to find out how Dr. Wheeler was going to get out of her predicament. And it’s a doozy of a predicament.

I appreciated the Christianity worked in. Several of the supporting characters are Christians. Dr. Wheeler is not, so gives some interesting perspectives on prayer and Christian friendship.

This is book one in a series. The second book will focus on Dr. Wheeler’s dysfunctional sister, according to the preview.

Book Rankings for 2021:

1. The Water Keeper by Charles Martin
2. Save the Girls by Terry Toler
3. Choose Me
4. I See You
5. The Suriname Job
6. Poisoned by Patricia Hartman
7. Missing Sister

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