3 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Our existence today in America would not be what it is without brave men and women from the past standing up for freedom. In his book, A Desperate Turn of Events: A Revolutionary Rewrite, MJ Clark takes readers on a trip to 1777 when the king of England was on a rampage to squash a rebellion band of people who decided that they no longer wanted to be under Britain's control. The British were quite certain that they had the upper hand against a group of young boys and farmers led by George Washington. But, after two years of battling and chasing the enemy, the king was at his breaking point. This is where the novel begins as the countdown to Valley Forge gets underway.
I liked how this author wove together a tale about what events could have happened. As we all know from our history classes, Washington and his men faced one of the largest militias ever with few weapons and support on their side. How did they come out the victor when all the odds were stacked against them? MJ Clark writes a compelling storyline complete with spies and those working against the royal crown. Readers are invited into both war rooms as each side discusses their strategies and how to outmaneuver the other. The two points of view are what made the book so suspenseful. I was never in the dark about what was about to happen, but even the best-laid plans can get thwarted, so the element of surprise was not forgotten either.
Usually, in books that depict battle, the graphic scenes can be horrific, but I did not find that to be the case with this one. As far as language and sexual scenes, both were light to non-existent. They say that all is fair in love and war, so some of the spies employed by the Americans were ladies of the night, but there was only one slight scene that sexual content was implied but not gone into too much. I don't like a lot of violence or sexual explicitness, so this was also a nice feature of this novel. I didn't feel uncomfortable reading the content at all.
George Washington expressed his love for God and the need for prayer as he faced off with his opponents. His beliefs are recorded from a Christian standpoint, but there is not an agenda to push Christianity on the readers of this book. The conflict between the two countries was described as a David and Goliath moment which is in reference to a story from the Bible.
The biggest drawback was the many errors I found in the writing mainly revolving around dialogue where the punctuation was not correct. I also found some formatting issues and places where capitalization was not done properly. Because of this, I suspect that a professional editing job was not done on this manuscript, so I would recommend that this take place because the plot of the novel is so good, and these mistakes can easily be fixed. Other than that, I have no other faults to find, so I am awarding 3 out of 4 stars for the wonderful and intriguing retelling of the Revolutionary War. For those who like historical fiction, you will find this one to be a gem, and for readers who don't enjoy books that involve war or history, you might want to pass on this one.
******
A Desperate Turn of Events
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
