Stranger Things - Erin Healy

When this popped up in the donations for the church library, I was interested.  I'd read a bit of this author in the past, but it was a few of the books she wrote with Ted Dekker.  I wasn't as fond of those as I was when I read Dekker alone, so I wanted to read one of Erin Healy's books to see if I liked her better on her own.

Serena's life comes crashing down one day when she's accused of sexual misconduct with one of her students.  She tries to get away from the accusations only to end up witnessing a shooting.  After that, she ends up involved with human trafficking and there doesn't seem to be a way out.

This book does a good job connecting you to the characters, which is good and bad at the same time.  Getting connected to a character who ends up murdered was sad, but it wasn't as tough as reading the parts about the abused women.  Those were just rough.

While I would consider this a page-turner, it was a relief when I finished it.  The older I get, the more invested I seem to get in my fiction.  I understand that it's not real, but knowing the trafficking is a real problem colors my view of the book as a whole.  It had a "happy" ending, but this kind of story was so hard to read.

Healy has great style, and I appreciated the depth to the characters.  It was a well-written book, just not one I enjoyed.