Title: Miranda’s Appeasement: If Your Heart is Not Content There is No Peace
Author: Barbara Allemeersch
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1-9845-1579-7
Pages: 180
Genre: Fiction / Thriller
Reviewed by: CC Thomas
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Pacific Book Review
Get ready for an emotional rollercoaster in Miranda’s Appeasement: If Your Heart is Not Content There is No Peace by Barbara Allemeersch. The author will, alternatively, have you sighing, smiling, yelling, screeching, crying, and stomping your feet by the end of the story. While it starts out as a nice pleasant ride, Allemeersch soon veers the story into dark and dangerous forays. Before correcting course to a hoped-for happy ending, the story will have readers feel pain and question their own sense of morality and ethics when watching the heartbreaking plot unfold.
The story centers around Miranda, a beautiful and beloved 18-year-old who lives a dream life in southern Georgia. Picture the proverbial Georgia peach and you can understand Miranda. She is soft and sweet of heart and lovely to look at. However, it isn’t long before readers get the sense this isn’t a tale of a happy-go-lucky girl living the perfect life. Miranda is soon in a road rage incident gone very wrong. When a group of drunken boys blame her for some driving mishap, they decide to take the law into their own hands. So, they follow her, kidnap her, and subject her to horror and violence.
How many of us have been the victim of road rage? While probably not the extreme outlined above, most drivers have seen other drivers who simply need to be removed from the road. That’s easy to understand. And, Allemeersch is very crafty with making the reader understand that taking the law into one’s own hands is a dangerous slope. It’s easy to be angry with the young men in the story and the reader will first feel that their brand of justice is wrong in so many ways. However, those feelings will likely change. Readers will be left wondering if ever taking the law into personal hands can be a right decision? If you like wrestling with moral decisions like this, you’ll certainly have a lot to reflect upon within this story.
Allemeersch has us follow Miranda, as she heals and moves on with her life. Miranda becomes a police officer in a nearby city, Atlanta, and focuses on helping others who have been traumatized and victimized. When Miranda is handed the case of a young girl, beaten and raped, she veers to the path of sane and orderly and the story takes a dark and disturbing turn. Miranda has a break with reality and decides to take the law into her own hands, with disastrous results for all involved.
Allemeersch’s Miranda’s Appeasement will have you rooting for Miranda, and then shuddering when reading how violence truly destroys her happiness. When the emotional ride of the story is over, this book will leave readers with a lot to think about— moral and ethical questions that don’t have black and white answers. This is a gripping, powerful book that will have you holding out hope until the very last page.
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