Wolfsbane - Ronie Kending

I will admit to doing a happy dance when I walked into work (a bookstore) and saw that Wolfsbane, the newest Military/Romantic-Suspense novel by Ronie Kendig, had been released.  Literally, I danced.  A co-worker and I had been eagerly counting down the days/months until the release - being that we are such fans of the series.  It should be noted that when the aforementioned co-worker walked in the store later on and I shoved a copy of the book in her face, she too squealed and did a happy dance. 

  A few days later my boss ran up to me and said, “So have you read the new book in our favorite series?!”  Little did I know that after my raving about Nightshade and Digitalis after their releases, she started gobbling up the books as well.   She caught me off guard yesterday when she came up to me and in a very serious, concerned voice said, “I have horrible news…”  Images of empty candy aisles at the supermarket flashed in my brain.  She gave me a pained face and cried, “I finished Wolfsbane last night!  Now what am I supposed to read?!”  My heart went out to her, I too recently went through this horrible loss.  Judging by the bags under her eyes, I knew it had been a long night.  Though my own bloodshot eyes should be the last to judge…  We both agreed that after reading any of Ronie’s books we have to go through a time of “mourning” where we can’t read anything else.  Because, as she mentioned, “All of the other books I read afterwards seem so below par.  I have to regroup and let that one filter out of my brain before I can read anything else.”  My thoughts exactly.  After the general consensus of Ronie Kendig’s literary genius, we decided to display Wolfsbane in the front window of our store and put a “we recommend” sign on the shelf with her books.  My customers should know this by now, though.  It seems that after every release in the Discarded Heroes series, any customer that even glances in the direction of the fiction area of the store will get a talkin’ to about the series from me.  Call me crazy, but I love a suspense novel that is full of suspense!  And Wolfsbane delivers!

One, out of many, reasons I am such a fan of these books is because of their raw honesty!  The characters are human: broken, gritty, and so completely raw that my heart actually hurts for them at moments.  Often, in Christian fiction, the characters will show their “human-ness” to a certain degree, but they are still relatively put together people who have everything resolved by the last paragraph.  Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it isn’t realistic.  What is so great about Ronie Kendig’s books is that she highlights how these very flawed characters have to fight to see change in their lives, it doesn’t just happen.  And they are not peachy clean by the end of the novel, they’re still in the midst of growing and healing.   

Another reason why I absolutely loved Wolfsbane in particular, is for some very taboo subject matter it covers.  I won’t say what (you’ll have to read it to find out!) but I applaud Ronie for putting her characters in a compromising situation and seeing them fail!  As a reader, it gave me a mere glimpse of what it is like for the Lord, seeing His children make poor, sometimes down-right horrible choices and being heartbroken because of it.  The main characters, Dani and Canyon, hit rock bottom and had to completely lean on Christ to climb back up again.  It was beautiful.  It was gritty.  It was real life.  

If you didn’t catch my subtle hinting before, I will say it again - I highly recommend Wolfsbane and all of the books in the Discarded Heroes series.  And when your finished, feel free to stop by my bookstore, my boss and I will console you in your loss.  We’ve been there.