I enjoyed Gabriel’s tale of his journey through life and his connection to The River. It was a “feel good” story.
Many thanks to Thomas Nelson and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I found this buried deep on my kindle. It was a quick read and I loved that the blurb didn't give too much of the story away.

Beginning when Gabriel is only 5 years old and progresses till he is an adult. The River is his journey of self discovery, it's about coming to terms and understanding the past.

Like I said it was a quick read that I found lacking in depth and felt rather flat as did Gabriel's character. The story moves fairly quickly not leaving a lot of time to connect or appreciate all he goes through. It kinda felt like a short story but longer. The scenery was nice, made me crave summer and spending time in the outdoors.

Deemed Christian Fiction it didn't touch on anything on that front, maybe the second book - Into the Canyon, does.

I went into this book with high expectations. I'm not exactly sure why but I expected it to be more than it was. The beginning was interesting and held my attention but the further the story went along, I just couldn't become invested in the development or in the characters. The writing seemed like it was targeted for a younger reader and just didn't do it for me. The synopsis of the book seemed - at least in my eyes - seemed to promise some thrill, some suspense and I just didn't get that. I'm honestly disappointed that I couldn't enjoy this book more but I'm happy that others seemed to get out of it what they were looking for. This one just wasn't for me.

I will be open and honest that I am not a huge fan of Christian novels. I understood the symbolism of the river but I did not find it worthy. I thought the writing was a bit stale with no meaningful character development. I wanted to like this more. The plot was very predictable and I could see exactly where this was going.