Watch Over Me by Christa Parrish

This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
Watch Over Me
(Bethany House October 1, 2009)
by
Christa Parrish


Things like this don't happen in Beck County. Deputy Benjamin Patil is the one to find the infant girl, hours old, abandoned in a field. As police work to identify the mother, Ben and his wife, Abbi, seem like the obvious couple to serve as foster parents. But the newborn's arrival opens old wounds for Abbi and shines a harsh light on how much Ben has changed since a devastating military tour. Their marriage teeters on the brink and now they must choose to reclaim what they once had or lose each other forever.

If you would like to read the first chapter of Watch Over Me, go HERE.




Christa Parrish graduated high school at 16, with every intention of becoming a surgeon. After college, however, her love of all things creative led her in another direction, and she worked in both theatre and journalism.

A winner of Associated Press awards for her reporting, Christa gave up her career after the birth of her son, Jacob. She continued to write from home, doing pro bono work for the New York Family Policy Council, where her articles appeared in Focus on the Family’s Citizen magazine. She was also a finalist in World magazine’s WORLDview short story contest, sponsored by WestBow press. She now teaches literature and writing to high school students, is a homeschool mom, and lives with her husband, author Chris Coppernoll, and son in upstate New York, where she is at work on her third novel.

I have mixed feelings about this book.  There were things that I just loved about it - such as the whole "baby on the doorstep" type thing that I've always dreamed about, and the character of the deaf boy (I just fell in love with him).  Other things I wasn't so sure about - each character seemed to have so much baggage and it took until well into the book to figure out what most of the underlying issues were with each of them (I just found that confusing), and there were some "intimate" parts that I felt might have been better left to the imagination at times. 

The end was disappointing (in a sad way), but also rewarding at the same time.   I liked it enough to pick up more books by the author.