"Deployed" by Mel Odom

Deployed by Mel Odom
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Bekah Shaw is a single mother divorced from a serious low-life she should never have married in the first place. She joined the Marine reserves, never expecting to be deployed, but has spent six months each in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the opening of the book, Bekah gets into a fight in a bar with a man much larger than her who starts beating her friend. Everyone (including said "friend"), agrees with the aggressor, saying Bekah started it unprovoked and she is arrested. While she's waiting for her trial, she is once again called to active duty, this time to Mogadishu.

I knew this was going to be a hard book to review going into it due to my personal views on women in the military--especially combat, but I worked hard to set that aside and go into it with an open mind. I know some have said a woman would not be leading a fire team, but I did some research and found out that there are actually women marines (or at least one that I know of) that are fire team leaders.

The story felt rather disjointed for the first part of the book as character after character is introduced, but then finally starts to coalesce when they all end up deployed together. I'm not military, so I couldn't speak as to the reality of the combat situations, but it felt very realistic and well done.

That said I'll move on to what really dropped this review in my opinion. This book is marketed as "Christian Fiction". I beg to differ. The book starts with Bekah in a bar for beer with friends. Pretty much everyone introduced in the book is either blatantly non-Christian or the subject is ignored. God is barely mentioned through almost the entire book. A few remembered Bible verses from childhood and an "epiphany" during battle that maybe this moment is why God has you here accompanied by a prayer that you can make that perfect shot does not a Christian book make. I kept waiting for a Christian character to show up, one of the characters to remember enough from childhood to get saved, or even for salvation to just be mentioned! Nada. As a military fiction book, I think it's pretty good. As a Christian fiction book, it fails miserably. Very, VERY disappointed!