Book Review: Vicious Cycle

I got the audiobook version of Vicious Cycle by Terri Blackstock when someone posted on Facebook that it was free at GoBible.com for a limited time (it is no longer free at this time). I’ve enjoyed many of Terri’s books and hadn’t read anything by her in a while, so I snapped it up.

This is the second book in her Intervention series . The first book, also titled Intervention, was written several year’s after Terri’s own daughter was trapped in and then delivered from drug addiction. I had not read that one, but there were enough references in this book that I felt I had a basic enough understanding of the points of reference connecting the books.

In this book, Emily Covington is about to finish a year of treatment in a drug rehab facility. One of her friends there, Jordan, leaves the facility, goes home, unexpectedly goes into labor and gets high on meth to handle the pain. She doesn’t go to the hospital partially because she waited too late but partially because her own drug-crazed mother won’t take her. When Jordan wakes up and comes to her senses, she discovers her mother has plans to sell the baby. When Emily’s brother, Lance, comes to Jordan’s house to try to talk her into going back into treatment, Jordan desperately hides the baby in his car to get her away from her mother. Lance doesn’t realize she has done this until he leaves, then, he decides to take the baby home, thinking Jordan will come for her soon. But it is obvious something is wrong with the baby. Just as he decides to take the baby to the hospital, his car is surrounded by police and Lance is arrested for kidnapping.

Lance’s mother, Barbara, calls the detective who helped in her daughter’s case, Kent, and together they try to clear Lance, decide what’s best for the baby, and help Jordan to understand that though she has so many strikes available, a new life is possible with God’s help. When they discover evidence of a baby-trafficking ring, they realize that Jordan’s baby as well as others are in more serious danger than they had thought.

People who accuse Christian fiction of being too pristine to be realistic have not read Terri Blackstock. Somehow she portrays the gritty realism of drug addiction without making us feel we’ve been dragged through the gutter. There is enough there to be convincing without overdoing it.

My husband and I have had family members on both sides who have gotten involved with drugs, sadly, and we recognized the pattern of their behavior in Jordan and her mother. Emily, in the first book, had come from a good family. Jordan’s family is part of her problem rather than a solution or a support. Yet both girls had to realize where true help comes from and be willing to lay hold on it.

I very much enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the next one, Downfall, which, incidentally, can be pre-ordered in a e-book version for $4.99 before the end of February. I have my order in!

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)