Title: Destiny
Author: Andy Mitchell
Publisher: Book Marketeers
ISBN: 9798330254897
Pages: 370
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Reviewer: Lily Amanda

Read Book Review

Destiny by author Andy Mitchell starts with Cora Jackson, a widow living alone in a remote cabin located on a two-hundred-acre spread in a rural area outside the small town of Prescott in the Arizona Territory. She is sitting outside her cabin on her weathered porch when she sees a strange man on a horse approaching. She quickly notices that he has a sense of vulnerability in his voice as he asks for a job and it’s this hint of vulnerability which doesn’t shake her as one would expect that leads her to let down her guard and allow him to find and chop firewood for her. Cora feels good that a man is around her once again, even as she remembers her late husband, Walter, who she strongly feels was never still but always working. He had this stubbornness that ended up costing his life.

Cora realizes pretty quickly that the stranger, Will Martin, isn’t anything like Walter, in that he is calm, patient and he listens, things she wasn’t used to before. One can tell early in their meetup that the sense of peace and comfort she develops can make her allow him to stay a few more days which she actually does, as he fixes a few extra things around the compound. The story captures their mutual attraction which unfolds in quiet glances, shared chores and meals, as well as conversations that end with more left unspoken than said. As they interact, one thing however remains certain – with each unspoken understanding, something real begins to take root, deep inside their souls. This development is however quickly shattered when Cora encounters a newspaper with the drawing of a man who is wanted for murder (definitely Will’s), and in the wind around Prescott area. Confused and feeling betrayed, she asks him to leave leaving no room for discussion, which leaves him with only one decision – disappear for good or gather courage and turn himself in and face a justice system that seems to have already decided his fate.

This is a story that pulls you in not just as someone watching from the sidelines but also as an active participant in the experience, through its immersive sensory prose and its deeply personal stakes that draw you straight into the characters’ world. It carries a heavy dose of unspoken tension and quiet moments that allow you to feel every bit of their doubts, longings, as well as their profound sense of desperation. As you interact with them you get to understand the choices they make not from a place of judgement, but from a human one, and not as you take sides well, the story doesn’t ask you to but rather, as you neutrally hold onto truths from both sides and as you stand in the blinding, unresolved space between them.

This story took my breath more than once with its steady kind of power that sinks into you before you even realize what is happening. It is one of those stories that carry a profound level of emotional suspense, leading you down the tense corridors of justice where you are forced to sit at the edge of your seat, your heart in your throat, and praying that the jury sees what you are seeing – that sometimes the most dangerous weapon a man can carry is not a gun but a secret. I loved every bit of its romance trope, “the slow burn in the wilderness,” which comes out at the end as an earned kind of romance that makes your heart swell just before it breaks. If you love stories where the setting feels like a real character as well as those where the tension comes from emotion just as much as the action, Destiny by Andy Mitchell will feel like it was written just for you.