Red, White, and Blue by Laura Hayden - My Review

Originally Posted at Bibliophile's Retreat by Melissa Meeks

Tyndale House (February 5, 2009)
Emily Rousseau Benton and Kate Rosen are best friends yet the environments they grew up in are millions of miles apart. Having spent much of their friendship years together in each others homes, in a sense they are aware of the disparities in values and belief systems separating them. However, it truly hits home how differently they interpret and handle things when Emily climbs the political tower of success and finds herself in the Oval Office where she has appointed Kate as Chief of Staff for her administration. When Kate crosses her best friends desires and “demands” of her in the name of preserving her own integrity and trying to keep Emily from compromising her own and endangering her recent election with a scandal before they’ve even settled into their new roles, Emily shows her true colors and is backed up by a family wider and deeper than the Ocean who could form their own mafia style organization purely from their own network of blood relatives and lackeys.

Kate is finally forced to face the decision that has been hounding her conscience since before the election even began. During the course of running Emily’s campaign, she begins to get just a taste of the lengths to which Emily will go and the degree to which she is willing to stretch the truth or deny it altogether in order to promote her own agendas. After the inauguration however Emily seems to become even more bold in her flaunting of power and sense of immunity to truth and honesty. As things escalate Kate is cornered to the point of resigning or turning a blind eye to Emily’s manipulation and use of even Kate’s family to hold her hostage to Emily’s whims. Can Kate’s faith resist the political corruption she has been thrust in the midst of, will her protective instincts for her best friend win out over truth and justice, can their friendship survive the pinnacle of deception and ultimate betrayal that Emily deals when her hand is forced? Read this 2nd installment of Laura’s America the Beautiful Series. While this reads adequately as a stand alone I regret having missed out on the first book and hope to remedy that oversight soon. (ISBN#9781414319407, 352pp, $13.99)

Codicil:
Visit the author’s website or the series site and click the bookcover above to purchase your own copy or read more about the book. Don’t forget to get your copy of the series opener America the Beautiful if you haven’t yet read it.