Thank you so much Forge Books and Get Red PR for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I give this thriller a 3/5 star rating!
A new adventure in Alessandra Russo’s life has her investigating the Gospel of Judas and some of its lost pages that have now come into her possession. Linda Stasi writes about a well known mystery and brings it to new life in this fictional thriller. A cross between The DaVinci Code and National Treasure, I was left wanting to know about the real mystery behind the Gospel of Judas. While the story fell a bit flat for me, I enjoyed reading about such a unique topic and I was definitely intrigued to see what would happen to Alessandra along the way.
Goodreads Synopsis:
From hard-hitting New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi comes Book of Judas, a riveting religious thriller featuring beloved protagonist Alessandra Russo.
When her infant son is placed in mortal danger, New York City reporter Alessandra Russo is forced to save him by tracking down the missing pages of the Gospel of Judas, a heretical manuscript that was unearthed in Al-Minya, Egypt in the 1970’s. The manuscript declares that Judas was not the betrayer, but the beloved, of Jesus. The Gospel disappeared, only to turn up decades later, rotted beyond repair in a Long Island bank deposit box. Rumors ran rampant that the most important pages had been stolen.
Do the lost pages reveal a secret that will challenge Christianity’s very belief about the creation of life, or even the power to unleash Armageddon? What if such explosive documents fell into the hands of modern-day terrorists, dictators, or religious fanatics?
During her investigation, Alessandra is plunged into a dark world of murder, conspiracy, sexual depravity, and most importantly, a race against the clock to save her own child.
My Experience:
From the start I liked Linda’s writing style, it flowed easily and felt realistic, it seemed as though I was around real people. Especially Mad Dog, living my whole life right outside the city I could actually hear this guy talking with that accent it was so funny to me. And yes the bagels are the best and it is most definitely because of the water!
I was really interested in the history behind the Gospel of Judas, I hadn’t really known about this religious relic and the whole mystery behind it and now all I want to do is research it! I enjoy books that are based off real life unique topics, it makes for a much more interesting premise and it kept me interested the whole read to hear the different theories and discoveries.
As for the rest of the book, I just didn’t connect too much to it. I found Alessandra to be kind of funny, and I liked her fearless attitude, but some of the other characters were sort of bland. And at times Alessandra herself seemed to be a bit odd, trusting people with her child who she repeatedly kept saying she got weird feelings from…hmm? Then there was the issue with her love interest. I don’t want to be too spoiler-y and maybe I missed something since I didn’t read the first book, but it just seemed out of place and too much in a book that was marketed more as a thriller. That said, where was the thrill? I went into this with hopes of adventures and thrills and we only got one tunnel way adventure and some excitement in the last 90 pages for all of 10 pages. Finally, the ending was disappointing, this whole book is about these stolen pages and while I won’t give much away, I just was left feeling, “that’s it?”.
Had this story stuck to the mystery and given us more adventure and thrill it would have been better off, the romance was too much and the ending left a bit to be desired. Overall though, it was definitely an interesting read and I really enjoyed the topic, which pleasantly surprised me since I was iffy on the religious aspect. Fans of The DaVinci Code won’t want to miss this!
Katy's Library Blog 