Killer Field Trip

Jeanine Talbott's two children Justin and Josie have both recently joined the G-SEFH, they are both home schooled and this gives them something different in their week as G-SEFH offers a few different classes. Justin is excited because his history class are organising to go on a field trip and follow in the steps of George Washington, however, the field trip is almost cancelled due to the current history teacher being put on bed rest due to pregnancy. This is where Jeanine is asked to step in and teach the history classes and Elizabeth (the original history teacher) organises someone from her history group to lead the excursion. Susan is a George Washington fanatic so seems to the perfect candidate to lead such a field trip, until things start to seem a bit off about her, and she winds up dead. What follows is a mystery of intrigue, who killed Susan? Why did they kill her? And where have all her maps and paperwork gone? A classic who-done-it.

Okay, so I didn't realise that this was actually the second book in this series, this didn't impede the story at all however. I also didn't realise that this book carried such a heavy religious overtone. I felt that the religious side of it did put me off a fair bit, hence why my rating isn't higher even though I really enjoyed the story. It's shown at the beginning that the family are church goers, which is totally fine, however, I felt that the inclusion of bible verses and full prayers throughout the story was unnecessary. As well as the basic idea of "God will fix everything and make sure the boys are okay" that isn't to say that the characters just sit back and hope that God will save their boys when they are kidnapped, just that the idea of God and his all-seeing, all-being power was heavily used and sometimes felt pushed on the reader. The story would have flowed perfectly without the added religious stuff, and in my opinion, just noting that the family are religious, church goers, and maybe a reference here and there to God would have sufficed.

The story felt like it was written for a younger audience than what was intended. The style of writing and the childishness (?) of even the adult characters felt very middle-school to me. For example, Jeanine pouting on a few occasions because her 11 year old son wasn't 'rooting for his mother', that just felt very childish to me.

The characters were likable enough and the story flowed really well, the length was perfect for the story which meant that the story wasn't full of unnecessary filler which was great.

I enjoyed the story well enough, the characters were well written, but the push of religion kinda killed it a little bit for me.