Book Review: Nine

Rachelle Dekker
Revell, 2020
339 pages

Amazon Description:
Zoe Johnson spent most of her life living in the shadows, never drawing attention to herself, never investing in people or places. But when a wide-eyed, bedraggled teenager with no memory walks into the diner where Zoe works, everything changes. Now, against her better judgment, Zoe, who has been trying to outrun her own painful memories of the past, finds herself attempting to help a girl who doesn’t seem to have any past at all. The girl knows only one thing: she must reach a woman in Corpus Christi, Texas, hundreds of miles away, before the government agents who are searching for her catch up to them.

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Thanks to Revell for sending me a copy to review as part of the Revell Reads blogger program!

As I mentioned in my September book list post, while I’ve read plenty of books by Ted Dekker, this is the first one I’ve read by his daughter, Rachelle Dekker. She has a similar style (not unicorns and rainbows), but without the supernatural elements and creepy vibes, at least based on this book.

Nine is a suspense story that recounts a government coverup of a human experimentation project gone wrong. I will warn you that while I wouldn’t consider it graphic, there is plenty of violence in this book. Lots of people die, though it’s not gory. It’s more part of the action and there is a lot of action, with fight and flight scenes abounding.

The themes Nine touches on are trust, choice, and the question of nature vs. nurture. Several main characters struggle to decide how much of who they are is hardwired by their past and what was done to them, and whether or not they have the ability to impact their own futures by deliberately choosing a different path. There is also a thin thread of romance weaving through, but it is by no means a focal point in the story.

I really enjoyed Nine and have plans to pick up The Girl Behind the Red Rope soon, Rachelle Dekker’s previous book that loosely relates to Nine. It looks like she has about four more books in her backlist that I’d like to check out as well. Highly recommend this book for lovers of suspense, especially if you like a good conspiracy to go along with it.