Her Stolen Past is a Love Inspired Suspense novel written by Lynette Eason. The novel is about Sonya Daniels, a hospice nurse who has a mystery to solve. While going through the personal effects of her late mother's home, she finds a birth certificate for a baby who had been kidnapped but never found. Brandon Hayes is a police detective who also works as an investigator for Finding the Lost, a private agency. He is hired by Sonya to find Heather Bradley. As Sonya and Brandon attempt to uncover the mystery of the missing child, their lives are endangered, and it becomes obvious that someone doesn't want Heather Bradley to be found.
Sonya, the daughter of a pastor and his wife, has her reasons for wanting to find out what happened to the Heather. Without finding out the truth, there will be a cloud of uncertainty over her family's past.
Having his life threatened has made Brandon more determined to discover why someone wants to keep Heather Bradley hidden. However, the more time he spends with Sonya, the more he falls in love with her, even though he knows that it is unprofessional to get into a relationship with a client. He's also gun shy about getting into a relationship with a woman since he was previously burned by his ex-fiancée. There's something about Sonya that makes him reconsider his thoughts about women, though, and he becomes interested in the idea of developing something with her, if only they can keep themselves safe from the deadly danger that results from their search for Heather.
In the past, I've found Lynette Eason's books enjoyable to read. This one was definitely filled with suspense and mystery. This novel also tossed in the issue of forgiveness; Brandon's character needed to come to a place where he could forgive the people who had hurt him in the past. The discussion of forgiveness by the characters and the resolution seemed a bit stilted and sudden, but I think that it may be due to the constraints of the smaller size of this kind of novel as compared to ones that are longer. Brandon's forgiveness of the people who hurt him took place over two months, but only over five pages in the book. I think that a longer novel would have given the forgiveness storyline a bit more developmental room to feel more natural. As it is, I'm pleased to read about a spiritual issue in addition to the suspenseful storyline.
Besides the tackling of a spiritual topic in this novel, I felt that there was something else different about Her Stolen Past as compared to other Love Inspired novels that the author had written. The first few chapters really drew me in with the mystery and plot development of the story because it starts off with a bang; Sonya is in danger of getting shot by a sniper. The danger continues in the book, but after a few chapters in, something changed in the writing style, although the pacing continued to move quickly. I'm still trying to decide if it was just a reflection of the character of Brandon with his aloof, no-nonsense, keep-to-the-point speech that gave a simpler and plainer feel to the story telling, or if the cause was due to something else.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the rest of novel; it kept my interest right to the very end. I loved the character of Sonya; she was a strong woman who stayed true to her faith in the Lord in spite of the tumult that was brought into her life because of her search for answers. I also liked that she stuck to her principles, even though it meant sacrificing the possibility of a relationship with Brandon.
Her Stolen Past is the final installment of Lynette Eason's "Family Reunion" Series.
