Tamara Tilley

Sunset by Karen Kingsbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The end of an era. SUNSET, the last book in a three series, fourteen book sequel, was good, but not the awe inspiring conclusion I expected. This goes to show more is not always better.

It goes without say that the Baxter family as a whole was the key characters in this final installment. Every individual family member’s story came to some sort of predictable conclusion. Once again, there was a lot of reviewing, for the consideration of first time readers. But, for those of us that have read the whole series, I found myself breezing over large sections of reflection.

I was sad to see John Baxter move on, even though it was realistic that a man of his age would find someone new to love. I also didn’t like the reintroduction of Angela Manning. It felt forced and a bit unbelievable. In a previous volume, Angela met Kari face-to-face, but in this book, she didn’t recognize her. I would think, even if Angela was in self-destruct mode, she would not forget the wife of the man she had an affair with.

All that to say, on a whole, this series was very enjoyable. I made this reading journey part of my New Year’s resolution since I had started reading the series when it was first released, continued to buy each volume, but stopped reading them because of other commitments. I had put Karen Kingsbury at the top of the Christian fiction writer’s pedestal for years because I felt she was a ground breaking author who wrote about Christian characters that were flawed and far from perfect. But, since the introduction of the Redemption Series in 2002, so many other Christian authors have burst onto the scene with great storytelling skills. Authors like: Irene Hannon, Candace Colvert, Richard Mabry, Lynette Eason, Ronie Kendig, and the list goes on.

Anyone who says Christian fiction doesn’t have the same intensity as secular fiction hasn’t exposed themselves to some of these newer, edgier, authors.


View all my reviews