Desert Secrets

3.5 stars

Nice twisty suspense, but the countries aren't very well portrayed. It made it hard to get a sense of geography when the countries didn't line up along currently drawn borders, so it was hard to get a good sense of the coming and going. I was a little surprised that wasn't caught in editing since it was such a large feature of the story.

Otherwise, though, I really loved the quick suspense and the many things that happened between the initial issue and the real ending, because there was so much danger that I was sure at least one of them was going to die along the way.

A Saharan adventure, this story contained great characters, dangerous situations, and ever-increasing high stakes. I thoroughly enjoyed 98% of this one, so I'll be glad to try another book by this author down the road.

The only drawbacks were a plethora of typos and a couple of rather large geographical errors.

Note: Geography has been a favorite subject of mine since early in elementary school, and I placed in the top ten in UIL in maps/geography in the fifth grade. African geography is one I studied particularly in my twenties, memorizing the locations of all 50+ countries, just for the fun of it.

There is no connecting border between Mauritania and Morocco, which made one particular plot point quite unrealistic.

The Strait of Gibraltar divides Spain and Morocco, so it would be impossible to “simply walk into Spain” from Morocco. This also means there is no “border” to cross between the two countries in the way that was heavily emphasized.

There were two lines on page 193 that correctly represented these two scenarios, but they only brought confusion as the geographical issues were already firmly established incorrectly.

Maps are super easy to find online these days. It literally took me five seconds after typing in the search box on Google to refresh my memory and confirm these mistakes. Therefore, it wouldn't have taken much time in the research phase of this book (or in the editing phase, for that matter) to check the geographical accuracy.

It was fun to see a Christian fiction suspense story set in African countries, but I wish the geographical details would have been accurately portrayed. I really enjoyed the abundance of twists and turns along the journey, and the way the characters turned to God in their time of need was wonderful. This was a delightfully complex story.