Blaze Astley has raised her half-sister practically since birth, and certainly since their mother died four years ago. Now she’s volunteering to help out in youth groups after Mercy came home crying after the youth pastor told her off.
Anson Marsh is the youth pastor who has his own set of problems, not least of which is an elder who wants to see him fired.
While I do have some sympathy for an elder who wonders why the church employs a full-time paid youth pastor to run a youth group with only a dozen attendees, it’s not the youth pastor’s job to grow the entire church. I also felt the head pastor didn’t stand up for Anson as much as he could have, particularly since the elder seems more focused on growing a social club than a church.
So the story has been set up as a romance between Blaze and Anson, with some obvious issues for them to overcome … not least that Anson is currently dating someone else.
I’m not a big fan of romances where one of the main characters is dating someone else, even if they do break up. I also wasn’t keen on the reason for the breakup–because Anson and Sydney didn’t have “passion”. The foundation of a strong Christian marriage is a strong shared faith, not passion. Too often, passion burns and dies, and divorce ensues.
During the story, Blaze and her sister Mercy were both tested for and diagnosed with ADHD.
The story did a great job of showing how the disorder presents differently in females than in males, the difficulty in getting a formal diagnosis, but the difference a diagnosis can make.
All in all, while I thought A Surefire Love did a great job of showing a great redemption story and the challenges of ADHD (and it certainly had some thought-provoking lines), I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as I enjoyed The Rhythms of Redemption Romances.
Thanks to the author for providing a free ebook for review.
About Emily Conrad
Emily Conrad writes Christian fiction. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two 60+ pound rescue dogs. Some of her favorite things (other than Jesus and writing, of course) are coffee, walks, and road trips to the mountains.
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About A Surefire Love
Small towns have long memories, and generations of dysfunction burned Blaze’s reputation before her own faults could.
Twenty-six and guardian to her preteen sister, Blaze is determined to give her sister the stability she never had. Her church is a big part of that plan, until a run-in with an uptight youth pastor derails their progress. Blaze goes toe-to-toe with a man who looked down on her back in high school—and volunteers for his team of youth leaders.
A survivor of the wreck that took his high school basketball coach, Anson sacrificed a promising athletic career to pick up Coach Voss’s legacy. Now a youth pastor, his mission to offer students real hope clashes with a leadership board that’s more concerned about numbers.
As his allies turn their backs and Blaze explores the impact of undiagnosed ADHD on the patterns of her life, Blaze and Anson find unexpected support in each other. Perhaps her preconceived ideas about him are as far off base as his are about her and her sister. When scandal ignites around them, will their love prove to be surefire—or crash and burn?
