This one caught me by surprise ~ pleasantly so...

I like legal dramas... Grisham is one of my favorite authors and I totally did not expect this book, Water's Edge by Robert Whitlow, to live up to that sort of expectation. But it did.

Part of the reason was I started the book while still living overseas. Then life in W. Africa happened: a war next door started, internet died, hot season and tons of power outages exhausted, a kid graduated, we moved internationally, I dove back into that phenomenon of worse culture shock coming home than going there...

So I started the book, stopped when life happened - and couldn't get back into it because I couldn't find where I'd left off and was having a hard time wading through the vague familiarity of having already read the first several chapters. It finally took knowing that my review deadline date (or else I'd lose my status as a book reviewer) was rapidly approaching to motivate me to just sit down and read the book.

I'm so glad I did... and thinking I'm gonna go find another one of his action/suspense legal dramas and check it out. I thoroughly enjoyed this read.

Tom Crane, an up and coming lawyer living the good life in the big city loses his dad, his job and his girl in relatively quick succession. Then, while back in the small town where he grew up attempting to close up and tie up all the loose ends from his father's law practice, he runs into curious circumstances: a mysterious trust fund without clear documentation, unexplained details concerning his father's accidental drowning while out fishing with a friend, an unexpected friend in the daughter of that other man who also died in the accident, an eccentric spiritual warrior uncle, uncomfortable situations with trusted and long time family friends... and last but not least, an unforeseen and lifechangingly powerful intimate encounter with God.

Tom Crane thinks he gets it all figured out and is ready to move on, ready for the next step accepting a great job offer from another big law firm in the big city. I was all set for the "drama" to predictably settle and for the last bit of the book to turn into a sappy Christian romance...

We were both surprised and survived! The last quarter of the book was much better than just good! I'm so glad that I stuck with it and finished this definite 4 star read!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.