Issue stories have long been a hallmark of the Harlequin Superromance line, and Tara Taylor Quinn’s latest Shelter Valley book touches on a number of hard-hitting topics. It’s not a particularly fun read. The love story is so secondary that this is more of a where’s-the-romance than a superromance. But while it is a flawed book, it’s also an effective one, and ultimately quite moving.

Martha Moore is a woman who has lost her faith. Abandoned by her husband for a much younger woman, she attends church with her four children out of habit instead of belief. The new minister, David Cole Marks, can see her crisis of faith, and tries to reach out to her and her family. Martha doesn’t believe the message he tries to share. But soon she and her family need him when her oldest daughter Ellen becomes the victim of a brutal rape (in a scene some readers should be warned is not easy to read).

The crime shocks the quiet town of Shelter Valley. It also brings back memories of a past David tried to escape and the secrets he keeps. He offers his counsel to Martha and her children and works with Martha to catch the rapist. Meanwhile Martha must cope with her rebellious second daughter, Ellen struggles to come to terms with the attack, and her other children deal with their father’s abandonment and the new baby he’s having with his new wife.

Nothing Sacred is a shorter-than usual Superromance, only 279 pages long (the last twenty pages are used for a preview of Quinn’s next book). That’s not very long for all the subplots and issues Quinn tries to tackle, and at times it shows. The romance is the least of all the subplots, to the point where it’s often easy to forget this is a romance novel. Some of it is too easy, such as the way Martha eventually overcomes her husband’s betrayal through one conversation with a friend. Some of the dialogue the teenagers deliver isn’t believable and sounds like it’s coming out of the mouths of much older people. Some of the characters are barely developed, like Martha’s son Tim and her third daughter whose name I could never remember because she’s fairly pointless.

And yet, for all its technical weaknesses, the book mostly succeeds on an emotional level. The story’s effectiveness builds as it goes along, to the point where the ending kind of snuck up on me. While some moments feel too easy or contrived, there are others that are very successful. There are key scenes that are touching and poignant, packing the punch they should. Nearly all of the book’s best moments come in the last few chapters, down to its sweetly redemptive ending and a final moment at the church that is very nice.

David is an interesting hero. He’s a man of faith, but never overly pious. He does his best to reach out to his parishioners, yet doesn’t yield with Martha’s troubled second daughter when it’s clear she’s walking a dangerous path. Part of this is a result of his own troubled past and the sinful activities he participated in before he became a minister. Though there were indications of this throughout the story, he remained a little too enigmatic for too long. I wish some of his past had been revealed earlier instead of being dropped in one fell swoop in the end. Overall the book has a nice sense of faith without being preachy (this isn’t an inspirational).

Nothing Sacred isn’t a great book or close to what it could have been. For much of the time, it hovered around a high C, mainly because I wanted more development and balance of the storyline than I was getting. But it is an interesting read, the ending was very affecting, and I wound up liking it more than I expected. The author reaches for more than she achieves, but the book is still very much worth a look.