By Your Side

By Your Side – Candace Calvert – Tyndale – Published 1 March 2015

♥♥♥♥♥

ER nurse Macy Wynn learned essential, gritty lessons in the California foster care system: land on your feet and trust no one. She’s finally located the fellow foster child she loves like a sister, but the girl’s in deep trouble. Macy’s determined to help, no matter what it takes. Her motto is to “make it happen” in any situation life throws at her—even when she butts heads with an idealistic cop.

Deputy Fletcher Holt believes in a higher plan, the fair outcome—and his ability to handle that by himself if necessary. Now he’s been yanked from Houston, his mother is battling cancer, and he’s attracted to a strong-willed nurse who could be the target of a brutal sniper.

When everything goes wrong, where do they put their trust?

By Your Side is one of those books that makes you giddy inside from joy and yet keeps you on edge enough to madly flick through the pages.

Macy Wynn is an ER nurse, survivor of foster care, hiker, bike rider and kick boxer, and is determined to take care of herself. Deputy Fletcher Holt is equally determined to help heal his mother, fix the relationship (currently non-existent) with his long-time love and friend, Jessica, and generally save the world. When Fletcher and Macy meet on an overpass, stuck behind an overturned truck and resulting traffic pileup, both are determined to do what they can to help and end up butting heads. When a sniper starts taking shots at the stranded motorists, Fletcher jumps to protect Macy, and Macy can’t help but be grateful to have someone at her side. As the sniper continues a rampage across the city, Macy and Fletcher find themselves brought together, and begin to explore the possibility of reaching out and trusting.

Candace Calvert can be relied on to write wonderful medical suspense that is realistic and dramatic, but clear enough that someone like me, with zero medical knowledge, can easily keep up. The romance is delightful, delicious, toe-curling – there aren’t enough good adjectives to describe the wonderful relationship that slowly blooms between Macy and Fletcher. By Your Side has a perfect title, gorgeous cover, great ending and excellent balance of suspense, faith and romance. I loved the scenes between Fletcher and Macy and their shared humour, which provides the perfect relief between the plentiful high-action events.

There is, as always with Candace Calvert’s books, a complex mash of characters, which are handled in a way that they feel like an extended family. There is also the usual details for secondary characters which usually translate into subsequent books. I’m hoping ER nurse Taylor will have a staring role in the next book.

As for the suspense, there is plenty of action. Almost from the beginning you know the who of the situation, you just don’t know why. I really liked that it wasn’t more complicated than it needed to be – the focus of this book really is learning to trust in God and those around you.

Overall this is a great read, perfect for lovers of Candace’s previous books or for the reader looking for an engaging romantic suspense. Highly recommended.

The publishers provided a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fiction. Christian. Romance.

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If you like this try The Dandelion Field by Kathryn Springer

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