Book Review – The Journey of Five by Jenny Phillips

What starts out as an interesting plot with a mystery of river water shutting off and an army extorting villages to turn the river water back on – for a time really gets slogged down and loses the plot. Each of the group has their own special ability, even the dog, with the main character Finn having his special ability revealed later in the book. While this is a good plot point and character reveal, the book fails to build up Finn at the beginning of the book to make it known that the leaders who chose him knew about this trait. The story moves along well at first but when it dips into realistic territory of finding food and shelter it really slows to a crawl to become almost a chore to continue. The sidetracks of the five where they help every person on the way adds to the overall plot, however, in the context of the motivation of the characters these actions would be dooming their villagers they’re supposed to be helping. The story picks back up towards the end with some good reveals and an excellent lesson on the Christian message of standing in the place of guilty people. However, the plot doesn’t do enough to earn that lesson other than the character just wants to help the clearly guilty and bad guys. Overall, the beginning and end are well-written and makes you care about each of the characters. The ending sums up everything nicely, although a bit too simplistic to reach a “happily ever after” end. But that middle part of the book was a journey in and of itself.