Someone to Blame, C.S. Lakin

I’m hoping to find more quality Christian fiction in 2012 and I’ve had a good start with C.S Lakin’s Someone to Blame being the first book completed for the year. But is that book a sign of things to come? Or has the bar been set too high for the coming months?

Unlike so many Christian books I’ve read recently, Someone to Blame has credible characters experiencing believable situations and facing very real faith challenges. It also avoids the clumsy preachiness that I’ve found in so many other novels of this type, but without compromising or holding back.

It might seem a strange comparison, but the structure of the novel reminded me of Stephen King's work, with a variety of characters in a small town facing a perceived threat from an outside source. However Lakin keeps her story firmly grounded in the familiar, with a positive recoginition of God's reality.

One of the most encouraging things about this book for me is the way it shows that quality Christian fiction is achievable, so maybe I'm not chasing a vain dream with my own writing ambitions.