The Crossing by Serita Jakes is a Christian fiction book about a mystery about a murder of a young school teacher. A number of high schoolers witnessed their teacher being shot and killed by a mystery gunman. Now all grown up, these high schoolers are still haunted by the tramatic experience. The story focuses mainly on the best friend of the school teacher, Claudia, and her inability to cope with the incident and her self-destruction and abandoning a perfectly wonderful loving husband. The book skips from each character's perspective but in third perso, so "Claudia did this and that" and not an "I did this and that" book.
Serita Jakes is a fantastic writer and I look forward to reading more of her books. She's mad a fan out of me. Her writing skills and her ability to draw the reader into the story is amazing. There is never one dull moment in this book. The plot grabs you from the first paragraph and moves along very quickly. I could not put the book down, it was so captivating. The author really did keep you guessing to the very end who the killer was. Fantastic suspense. I haven't read a fiction book that moves this quickly and captivating since I was a teenager. The only disappointment I had was that there was very little Christianity in the book. Only a few of the characters were Christian and even then their relationships with God were barely mentioned. So I would consider this book "barely Christian".
Since it is a Christian fiction, I should discuss some concerns that readers might have. There is no cursing in the book. The author writes "He swore" or "He cursed" only a few times, but there are no curse words in the book, unless you consider "d-a-r-n" one. Also there are no sex scenes or references to anything below the waist. There is one accusation of rape and there are a few moments of people desiring one another. There is one scene of a man attempting to convince his gilfriend to go home with him while kissing heavily and desire is described some. There is also one barely implied sex scene but no overt language at all. - the one instance a woman sleeps with her husband is barely even implied that if you didn't know what sex was, you wouldn't know it even happened. The scene mentions them in bed and then her getting dressed. So the author tastefully downplayed everything. There are two mentions of men beating their women and the description of one of the girls' face afterwards is quite graphic.
My disclaimer - I received this book from the publisher but I am not required to give a positive review. I always give brutally honest reviews and attempt to critically point out parts of the book that may not appeal to others. I want you readers to be able to confidently choose a book based on the stars I give it, because I know you have limited money, time and energy to read. So let's make the most of our lives and choose the very best books.
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