Anchoring You

Anchoring You by Robin Patchen is the nineth book in her The Wright Heroes of Maine series. Yacht captain Kenzie Wright is being targeted by a drug cartel in the Caribbean. To escape she must accept the help of DEA informant and playboy Jaz Aylett. Can they crack the Ghost’s network and get the information they need to bring him down before it’s too late? This was a very intense story with more ups and downs than a rollercoaster!

I received this book from Celebrate-Lit for my honest review.

About the Author

Robin Patchen is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of Christian romantic suspense. She grew up in a small town in New Hampshire, the setting of her Coventry Saga books, and then headed to Boston to earn a journalism degree. Working in marketing, she discovered how much she loathed the nine-to-five ball and chain. After relocating to the Southwest, she started writing her first novel while homeschooling her three children. The novel was dreadful, but her passion for storytelling didn’t wane. Thankfully, as her children grew, so did her writing ability. Now that her kids are adults, she has more time to play with the lives of fictional heroes and heroines, wreaking havoc and working magic to give her characters happy endings. When she’s not writing, she’s editing or reading, proving that most of her life revolves around the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

More from Robin

Too Far Gone? Writing a Prodigal Hero

When I started writing Anchoring You, I knew the hero was going to be a challenge.

On the surface, Jaz is everything my heroine Kenzie despises: a charming playboy who flits around the Caribbean with a different woman on his arm every week and a drink perpetually in his hand. When he tries to get to know her, she wants nothing to do with him. She’s heard the rumors. She knows exactly what kind of man he is.

Except she doesn’t know the real Jaz. Nobody does.

Underneath the polished persona, Jaz is drowning. A gambling addiction led to crushing debt, which led to a desperate deal with a dangerous man, which led to five years of living undercover as a DEA informant. He’s lost everything that matters—his money, his reputation, his relationship with his brother, Noah, and most painfully, his daughter Charlotte, whom he left with Noah to keep her safe from the criminals who control his life.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, Jaz also lost his faith.

The Prodigal Who Doesn’t Come Home

We all know the parable of the prodigal son. He squanders his inheritance, hits rock bottom, and returns to his father’s open arms.

But what happens when the prodigal believes he’s wandered too far, done too much, burned too many bridges to ever find his way back?

That’s Jaz’s life when we first meet him. He tells Kenzie at one point, “I’m not sure if I left Him or if He left me, but God and I haven’t had a relationship since I was a teenager.”

Jaz isn’t angry at God. He’s not wrestling with doubt. He’s just disconnected. Numb. He made choices that spiraled out of control. People got hurt, and somewhere along the way, he decided that men like him shouldn’t expect grace.

I think a lot of people can identify with Jaz, even if their circumstances aren’t as dramatic as his. It’s not always a crisis of faith that pulls us away from God. Sometimes it’s shame, the quiet belief that we’ve disqualified ourselves. We believe grace is real, just not for us.

A Faith That Doesn’t Preach

Kenzie could have lectured him or quoted Scripture at him. But Kenzie, a strong believer, doesn’t preach. Instead, she lives her faith, acting on what she believes. In one quiet conversation, when Jaz confesses how far he’s fallen, she offers him truth without judgment:

“There’s no such thing as too far, Jasper. Not with God.”

Kenzie’s relationship with God is evident in how she treats people, how she handles fear, how she extends grace to a man the world has written off. Kenzie’s witness begins to crack Jaz’s defenses.

Writing Broken Heroes

I’m drawn to characters who carry weight—who’ve made real mistakes with real consequences, not just minor flaws designed to make them “relatable.” Jaz gambled away half his family’s estate. He slept around. He abandoned his daughter—even if it was to protect her. He spent five years lying to everyone he met.

These aren’t small things. I didn’t want to minimize them or sweep them under the rug in the rush to make him likable.

I believe in redemption. I believe people can change—not by willpower but by the power of God.

Jaz doesn’t have a dramatic conversion moment in the middle of the action. His journey back to faith starts with prayer, the gentle testing of God in moments of crisis.

And God answered, protecting and guiding him through the most difficult time of his life. When it was over, Jaz realized God had been there all along.

That’s the heart of the prodigal story, isn’t it? The father doesn’t chase the son down the road. He doesn’t force him to come home. But when the son finally turns around, the father is already running to meet him.

Jaz spent years believing he’d gone too far. Kenzie helped him see that there is no “too far” for God.

Because if grace only works for people who haven’t messed up too badly, it’s not really grace at all.