Hidden Identity Trilogy // by Lynette Eason

• No One to Trust
• Nowhere to Turn
• No Place to Hide

//published 2014//

I was actually quite excited to find a new (to me) Christian suspense author, especially since my old favorite, Dee Henderson, has gone a bit downhill ever since she introduced Perfect Ann into the mix.

Eason’s books are thoroughly engaging.  While they weren’t THE most riveting stories I’ve ever read, they were still decently written with likable characters.

In No One to Trust we meet Summer, who is about to discover that her husband isn’t the person she thought he was.  Once they’re on the lam, truth and lies are tangled together and it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.  This one was a 3.5/5 for me, with a lot more action than actual story, but I was willing to go with it because the action was a good romp.  Summer’s sister was really annoying me, and it sometimes felt like some details were kind of glossed over to help things make sense, but still a good time.

//published 2014//

The second book takes place a year or so later (I honestly can’t remember how long, a bit but not super long) and focuses on Adam, who was a character in the first book.  Summer and her husband have now started an organization that is kind of a private witness protection program, except people aren’t usually witnesses, they just need help getting out of a bad situation.  Case in point is Danielle, who is trying to escape her incredibly abusive husband.  When he dies the day that Danielle is making her break for freedom, she at first thinks her problems are solved – except then some new problems arrive, and she and Adam have to untangle the complications.  This book was nonstop careening around, and that worked for the most part.  There were moments were I found myself wondering how these people were still awake, since it seemed like no one ever needed to sleep, and the baddies just kept coming!  Still, 3.5/5, and would have been a 4 except there was an ending to the book with a villain and everything is good… and then there was a second ending where it turns out there is the OTHER villain lurking in the background??  And second villain didn’t really make nearly as much sense as first villain, so the whole thing ended up feeling kind of contrived.

//published 2015//

The final book is about Ian and Jackie, with character from the first two books as background characters in this one.  Ian has been set up as a fall guy for a bioterrorist plot, except he finds out just in time and manages to escape.  He can’t turn himself in, so the good guys and the bad guys are after him, all while he’s trying to figure out what the heck is going on.  Jackie gets caught up in the madness, too, and they run around in circles for a couple hundred pages.  I’m not always a huge fan of terrorist plotlines, but this one felt like it worked.

The religion aspect throughout the series felt organic and not at all preachy.  It was also nice that the characters were all Christians, rather than the missionary-dating method sometimes used by other authors.  While these weren’t the most amazing thrillers I have ever read, they were quite enjoyable, and I definitely intend to check out some more of Eason’s books.