Book Review-The Domino Effect

The Domino Effect, by Davis Bunn, reads like an unfolding current events news report.  Esther Larson , a brilliant senior risk analyst at one of the largest banks in the U.S., leads an insulated life with few friends and a brother who is confined to a nursing facility .  His grim prognosis and future care falls solely on Esther who has no other family.

With the help of the one group of casual friends Esther has connected with, she is able to open up and share.  The unethical practices of risk management in her company and the data about the economy she has gathered since the Wall Street crash in 2008, have created a mounting panic she no longer can keep to herself. With her friends' encouragement and one particular divinity student, Craig, Esther puts together a plan and message that needs to be heard to avert what she believes is a financial global disaster.  As she exposes fraud and worldwide market strategies of greed, many get on board to help her stop what has been set in motion.  Will her plan be too late?  Will Esther survive those intent on blocking her?

Besides the market tension, there are Craig's two teenage daughters to woo, questions about Nathan's medical care, and a job change. Esther finds courage in remembering the faith of her parents and the woman in the Bible who she was named after.  Just as her Biblical namesake had a time sensitive mission, so Esther Larson is the woman at the right time and the right place.

The book pulls the reader into the story, teases by not revealing all of Esther's scheme at once, and is very disconcerting as the facts in the story feel too real to life in the present. I thought there could have been more development of the antagonists; Esther seems to publicly expose powerful, sinister entities with little resistance, until her plan is well underway.

Perhaps a good moral for the story is that those who are privy to secrets that can bring destruction need to be courageous enough to speak and act out for good and stop the first domino from falling.

I received this book from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review.