The Mission League: The New Recruit

"Mission 1: Moscow"

Bookworm's Ranking - 4 Worms
 

Storyline - Spencer Garmond loves basketball more than anything and is willing to do anything to play. So when he is presented with either going to Military school or joining the Mission League, a group of Christians who think they are spies, he picks the churchers. Caring less about God, he puts up with these crazy Christians and goes on the mission trip to Russia. While in Moscow, Spencer meets Pasha, a boy with a strange tattoo and who is involved with a scary cult. As the summer continues and Arianna, a Mission League girl, tries to convert him and surrounded by other devote Christians, Spencer will have to make a choice about the gift God has given him and if he wants God in his life.

Author - Jill Williamson

Publisher - Marcher Lord Press

Age Group - 15 and up

Content - *May Contain Spoilers* Spencer swears but the actual words don't appear in the book but switches to substitute swear words when he can no longer use real ones. He has no interest in God or the Christian thing and thinks/says insults towards the other Mission League members but begins to see them differently and wants to learn about God by the end. There is a cult and it is wondered if demon possession is involved but non of the protagonists like it. A character in her past has had a hard life, there are no details but it is known that she was attacked and has a kid.

Personal Opinion - What first attracted me to this book was 1. Jill Williamson (fantastic author), 2. spies (can rarely go wrong with this kinda plot), and 3. Russia (have a strange fascination and obsession with Russia since the movie Anastasia. Even have a book in Russian yet I can't read a word of it). While reading The New Recruit, I enjoyed the opportunity, like many of my fellow reviews, to see from the point of view of someone who doesn't practice their Christian faith while surrounded by those who do. It gave it gave me, the reader and a practicing Christian, a chance to see my behaviors towards someone who doesn't think, or believe, like I do. Spencer did begin to change before the end of the book and will be digging deeper, I'm sure, in later books into who God is. The action in the story was good and the cult that Spencer and Pasha got mixed up in was realistic. ***SPOILER*** For a literature class, I read an author with similar ideas of looking inside yourself for power and truth as the cult in the book thought (I don't think there are any conection between the two). ***END SPOILER*** The beginning was a little slow to me and I thought I saw a couple of telling situations but that faded as the book went on and I found myself picking the book up when school needed to be done from curiosity as to what would happen next. Looking forward to the next books in this series and all the adventure and character journeys to come.

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Buy - Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Publisher,

Links - Visit the Mission League here. Visit Jill Williamson's webpage to learn about her other books and read her reviews. Read an author interview and enter the giveaway.

Special Notes - This is book 1 in the Mission League Series. Read about the others on The Mission League

Disclaimer - In exchange for an honest review, I received this book for free from the publisher/author through Team Novel Teen.

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