Book Review: Over the Edge

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Title: Over the Edge
Author: Brandilyn Collins
Publisher: B&H Books
Date: May 2011
ISBN: 978-1433671623
Genre: Christian Suspense
Reviewed by: Lisa Lickel


I live and play in rural Wisconsin where ticks are a nuisance. After reading this book, I will take the “tick check” a whole lot more seriously.

Brandilyn Collins gets up close and personal with Over the Edge. She’s suffered from two bouts of debilitating Lyme Disease and knows what she’s talking about. In fact, she took her crusade across the country, urging readers to understand how the medical profession plays with lives by refusing to accept Lyme and its vicious secondary infections as a chronic condition needing extensive antibiotic treatment.

Although Over the Edge is fiction, it’s based on real symptoms and reactions to treatment, or the lack of treatment, of Lyme Disease. Revenge is the goal of a grief-stricken spouse who watched his wife die a slow, merciless, and unnecessary death, when doctors misdiagnosed and then refused to treat the disease appropriately. He attacks and infects Jessica McNeil, the wife of the leading medical researcher of Lyme disease, to force the doctor to change his mind about treatment. Dr. Brock McNeil defends his point that those demanding extensive treatment are mentally ill and making up symptoms after a six-week course of antibiotics. Dr. McNeil has many delusions in life and is on the verge of leaving his wife and daughter for another woman. When Jessica becomes critically ill with misdiagnosed Lyme, he uses her childhood history against her and files for custody of their daughter. Thus the battle is enjoined on two fronts.

Tension escalates and the reader is sucked into a vortex of disbelief, regret, rage, and helplessness along with Jessica as she struggles for her life. I know more than one person who’s dealt with Lyme, including a family member. I never realized the terrible dichotomy of thought about this disease in the medical field. I might not have bought and read this book if I hadn’t enjoyed meeting Brandilyn and hearing her speak. That night, a family whose child was undergoing treatment for chronic Lyme was in the audience. Brandilyn took the time to minister to this family, and that devotion touched me deeply.

Okay, excuse me-time for another tick check.


Lisa Lickel is a Wisconsin writer who lives with her husband in a 160-year-old house built by a Great Lakes ship captain. Surrounded by books and dragons, she writes inspiring fiction. Her novels include mystery and romance, all with a twist of grace. She has penned dozens of feature newspaper stories, short stories, magazine articles, and radio theater. She is the editor-in-chief of Creative Wisconsin Magazine and of Other Sheep, a Christian sci fi/fantasy magazine. She loves to encourage new authors. Find her at LisaLickel.com

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