Breakthrough by Joyce Smith

When fourteen-year-old John Smith fell through the ice on a Missouri lake one January morning, Joyce Smith was terrified that she would lose her son. When she arrived at the hospital, John had been without a heartbeat for more than an hour. Joyce wasn’t ready to accept that her son was dead and in a moment of pure, desperate faith, Joyce cried out to God to save her son.
At that precise moment, John’s heart began beating again.
Though his heart was going again, John was no where near out of the woods. Despite all of his doctor’s worries and facts, John quickly began to improve, with the mighty power of prayer behind him. Sixteen days after John fell through the ice, he walked out of the hospital, completely and miraculously healed.
I first heard of this novel when I saw the trailer for the movie. This got me interested in the novel. When there was a giveaway for the novel on Goodreads Firstreads, I figured I would enter. And then I won.
Being as this has a lot of medical scenes in it, I figured that if I didn’t win I would just see the movie. I know, I know. The book is always better than the movie, but I am not knowledgeable in medical jargon and I worried that I would have to Google search one term after the other while reading. Thankfully, though there are a lot of medical terms, Joyce Smith took the time to explain what they ment.
Joyce managed to put the reader right there in the hospital with her. The writing made the whole situation very real for a mother like me, from Joyce’s panicked dash to the hospital to the day John walked out of the hospital. I was there.
I thought this novel was a well written and worthwhile read. I gave this book five out of five stars and would recommend it to anyone looking to believe in miracles.
I won my copy of this novel from Goodreads Firstreads and the image above is my own. 

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