Rising Danger by Jerusha Agen

Rising Danger
by Jerusha Agen

ISBN-13: 9781335401878
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Love Inspired
Released: May 25th 2021

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Someone’s planting explosives on dams in the Twin Cities, and Bristol Bachmann and her bomb-sniffing dog must move quickly to find them before everything ends up underwater. That means relying on the dams’ supervisor—an ex-boyfriend Bristol never thought she’d see again. Hopefully Remington Jones has grown up from the rakish charmer she knew in her academy days. Because lives now depend on them.

It’s an environmental terrorist who wants the dams gone, and his bid to set the waters free has lethal consequences. When he sees Bristol and her K-9 working to stop him, he sets his sights on them. Can they protect the cities from devastating destruction before the clock runs out?


My Review:
Rising Danger is a Christian romantic suspense novel. Bristol and her bomb-sniffing dog were cool and confident in the face of danger, and they repeatedly faced danger in order to keep a large city safe. Bristol lost family members during flooding, and she doesn't trust God to care enough to keep anyone safe. It's up to her. She's determined to control everything she can to provide safety. This need to make people fit into her definition of safe dooms many of her relationships, like with Remington in the past. She won't forgive him for not living up to her standards but can't resist getting lost in his melty chocolate brown eyes. As he later realized, she was more in love with the idea of what he could be than with who he actually was.

Remington was irresponsible in the past, but he found forgiveness in Christ and changed. He's determined to prove this to Bristol. Unfortunately, he doesn't like his job, doesn't bring out the best in Bristol, and goes about proving how responsible he is by being irresponsible. (Which he realized by the end, where real change and healing happened.) As head of security for a bunch of dams, it's his job to increase the security after the bomb threats by convincing the owners to spend the money necessary to prevent bombs from being placed. Instead, Bristol's boss ended up doing his job because he wasn't. He escorted Bristol around to search for bombs (which someone else could have done) and tried to figure out who the bomber was because it would make him a hero if he did so before the FBI team.

The suspense was high due to the continual danger. Unfortunately, the author apparently didn't realize how damaging even a small breach in the dam could be due to the highly erosive power of fast-flowing water. The assumption was that the bomb would have to destroy a substantial amount of the dam when that's not actually the case. I liked the characters individually and how they developed by the end, but it was exasperating to see them initially attracted to each other for all the wrong reasons (like his need for approval). By the end, they both came to a better understanding of God's forgiveness and goodness. Through that healing, they became a better match for each other. There was no sex or bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable suspense.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.