Abducted - by Janice Cantore

Carly Edwards and Joe King are police partners, on the graveyards patrol shift, when they get the call that Joe's wife and infant son have been admitted to the hospital.  While the doctors are still figuring out what's wrong with his wife, his son is Abducted directly from the pediatric wing of the hospital.  Even as Carly tries to solve the kidnapping, she's also dealing with her ex-husband and their relationship that was looking towards reconciliation, while another man in her life begins to show interest in her.  Additionally, her roommate seems to be distancing herself from Carly, and becomes agitated at Carly's new found Christianity.  How will Carly deal with all of these relationship issues while trying to help her partner get his family back together and to solve a crime that's bigger than any of them imagined?

Abducted is the second book in the Pacific Coast Justice series, written by Janice Cantore, a retired Long Beach police officer.  While this book can certainly stand alone as a novel, there were numerous references to incidents in Carly's past, as well as several other characters, that I can only imagine were detailed in the previous book.  This book would have flowed as a story, for me anyway, without so many of those references.  Most of the past crimes referenced didn't have a bearing on this story and only served as distractions instead of helping the story along.

The deepest part of the story was that of Carly and Nick's path of forgiveness and new beginnings.  It was refreshing to read a book where, even though hurtful mistakes had been made and forgiveness wasn't easy, or even understandable by most of the people who knew them, they worked at their relationship and prayed for renewal.

Other than the forgiveness storyline, I found the book just okay.  I give it 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 stars.

You can find more from the author HERE.

I received a copy of this book for free from Tyndale publishers, in exchange for my honest review.