A little gravedigging, but I finally got around to reading this book (I've been reading a lot of Harry Potter). I started it Tuesday night and just finished it, Saturday afternoon. That's extremely fast for me, since I tend to read a book very slowly, concentrating on every word. I was reading this book so fast, I felt like I was skimming sentences just to keep going.
In that way, I love the book. Very few books manage to pull me in entirely like this one did. However, I was also looking and hoping for a huge twist ending (due to that guy's quote on the front cover: "a twist I never saw coming"). I didn't get that. And if this is the twist:
[SPOILER]That White was also an impostor of Lawdale[/SPOILER]
... then I saw that coming the entire time. Even when
[SPOILER]Lawdale suddenly showed up again near the end[/SPOILER]
... I kept telling myself, "I bet that's the big twist coming," while also hoping that it really wasn't. But there were no big surprises. Regardless, the book handled its themes very well, although I do agree that Leslie was handled incorrectly in the end. I think they did it to
[SPOILER]Keep Jack and Stephanie married in the end and their marriage saved. I find this totally bogus and not in line with the book. Plus, Stephanie's sudden change to a virtuous, unselfish character was unbelievable and too sudden.[/SPOILER]
The biggest disappointment with this book, however, are the typos. For one, they accidentally refer to Betty before Betty reveals her name to anyone. Also, they accidentally called Stewart by Randy's name once and did so in the present tense, almost as if it was a note in their outline of the book that was just cut and pasted into the prose. There was also a smaller typo later in the book. I find errors like this very irritating, especially since they're errors made about character names, not just typical typos.
Overall, this is definitely Peretti's worst book, and I see co-authoring it with Dekker as his biggest career mistake ever. The final advantage of this book is that it has sealed my decision to probably never read Dekker's books again. I consider him to be a weak writer with too many gimmicks and not enough payoff.
Man, I just trashed this book, huh?