This is my second read for this author and I have to say, I am underwhelmed... after reading Rescue, I was looking forward to reading more by Anita Shreve but Testimony seemed to miss the mark.

A very enticing topic, I thought this book held a lot of promise. However, I found that the book lacked organization and that would be it's main downfall, in my opinion. It seemed to jump from year-to-year without mention of when it was and while this is normally not an issue, it was hard to figure out and I spend unnecessary time figuring it out. Also, the jumping from character to character, when added to the year-to-year jumping, was very confusing. Having so many characters involved, I almost needed a family tree/chart to keep track of who each person was and what their involvement in the story/crime was... very hard to track.

On a whole, the story was very good. I enjoyed the plot and I liked the twist that comes towards the end, regarding Silas and his family. It was very unexpected and definitely made me read that much harder to get to the bottom of the story.

Overall, I am glad that I have read this book and being at a 50% for the author, I will give her another try.

I would encourage every parent of a teenage girl to give her a copy of Testimony. Certainly, it contains several passages that are bleakly obscene. But it also offers girls the exact kind of story they want to read