If Hiro’s theory
was right and Kryptsoki was a murderer, then they knew too much already. Enough
to get them hurt.
He sat up
shaking. This was insane. His imagination was taking him for a ride. But what
if it wasn’t his imagination? What if it was some kind of internal warning
system that he didn’t fully understand? He wanted to talk to Hiro. Needed to
see if she felt it too. But it was way too late for that. He stretched out on
his berth again and tried to calm down. Tried to think about totally unrelated things.
But like a storm on shifting winds, his mind kept circling back. “You are not
alone.” That was truth. And deep down, he knew that hanging onto that truth was
critical. Maybe it was the only thing that would get him through whatever was
to come tomorrow.
Genre: Mystery
Target Audience: Boys 13+
Subjects: Fear, Crime, Friendship, Trust
in God
Summary: A vacation is exactly what
they all need. Cooper and Gordy want to forget what happened to them, bury the
fear. Lunk desperately wants to solidify these precious, but seemingly fragile,
friendships. Hiro is the only one not interested. Now that she has seen what
she thought was a crime, it’s all she can think about. It’s not long at all
before the boys are fed up with her “womanly intuition”. They get that she
wants to be a cop someday, but spending the whole vacation trying to solve a
murder that didn’t happen is taking it a bit far. To their dismay though,
things keep happening and the fear is spreading. If they don’t start taking her
seriously, they might just be the murder’s next victims – whether they believe
there is a murderer or not.
Notes: Sequel to Code of Silence and
Back Before Dark, Below The Surface continues the story of Cooper and his
friends. In this story Cooper in particular is fighting a fear that seems to
attack him at times. He nearly drowned in a basement in the last story and
whenever he gets in dark water he starts to freak out. Lunk has a general
overall fear of the water. The whole mystery plays out on the water and so both
characters have to
wrestle with that fear throughout the story. Cooper in
particular has to learn that burying it won’t make it go away, only turning to
Jesus for strength and recognizing that Jesus will never leave him gives him
the strength to do what he needs to do. After the story, the author has a page
discussing the various responses to fear and how they hurt or help. Overall,
there’s a lot of hinting of spiritual matters, praying to God, recognizing
we’re “never alone”, but there’s not a source for this. It’s almost as if the
author doesn’t want to get too “preachy” and so skims lightly over the truth
without digging in too deep. There’s a lot more focus on the fear than on what
Scripture says about how to deal with it.
Spiritual Content
Recommendation Scale: 4/5
Reviewer: J:-)mi
Hebrews 13:5 – Keep your lives free from the love
of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
"Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."
1 John 4:18 – There is no fear in love. But
perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one
who fears is not made perfect in love.
Thank you to BookLook for providing me with a free
review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
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