35 Followers
41 Following
iola

iola

Currently reading

A Valley of Betrayal
Tricia Goyer
The Legion of Honor
Sharon Yoset, Sharon Yoset
Impostors at Blue Heron Lake
Susan Page Davis, Megan Elaine Davis
The Sacred Cipher: A Novel
Terry Brennan
Sons of Thunder
Susan May Warren
Blood Ransom PB (Mission Hope)
Harris Lisa
Captured by Moonlight - Christine Lindsay It is 1921, and Laine Harkness is an Army nurse stationed in Amritsar, India, where she works at the Queen Alexandra hospital and assists at the a local Christian mission. Laine assists Eshana to rescue a 14-year-old temple prostitute who is unlikely to survive labour without professional medical care. They save the girl, with the assistance of the handsome Dr Jai Kaur, but the women have been identified and the mob is out for vengeance to those who dare to disrespect Hindi beliefs.The women flee: Eshana takes their recovering patient to the Ramabai Mukti Mission in Madras. Here she comes face to face with her past, in the form of the uncle who abandoned her in an ashram as a grieving 13-year-old widow. Laine is assigned to a remote medical outpost where she is reintroduced to Adam Brand, who forbids her from visiting his estate and refuses to give any explanation for the letter he wrote breaking their engagement. One ongoing thread through the story is Laine’s lack of faith. It’s not made clear why an English woman with no personal faith would assist at a Christian mission run by and for Hindi child widows, and the question of Laine’s faith is, in my opinion, never satisfactorily resolved. This is a weakness made even more obvious by the strength of the Eshana/Jai subplot.The other weakness was minor, and had to do with the editing. At first I was impressed by the use of vocabulary and word order to show the different accents of the English, Indian and American characters. Then I realised there were no American characters, despite the use of Americanisms such as ‘gotten’. Oops. There were also a small number of irritating typos and homonym errors.Apart from that, the research and writing was excellent. The author managed to give a real sense of time and place with only a few well-chosen words. I could easily believe I had been transported to 1920’s India, and was especially impressed the way contemporary events (such as Ghandi’s peaceful protests) were woven into the conversations between the characters. Captured by Moonlight has everything: a unique plot, an exotic location, two heroines from two very different backgrounds and cultures, and a hero with a secret, and a second hero who must abandon everything he holds dear in order to win the woman he loves. Recommended for those who want something a little different from the standard American Christian romance.Thanks to the author and ACRBA for providing a free ebook for review.