Review of "His Eyes" by Mark Charles Powers

Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)

Brace yourself for an absolute gut punch!

His Eyes is a heartfelt, emotionally sincere, faith-affirming novel about grief, guilt, and the desperate need to believe that tragedy is not the end of the story.

This is a Christian grief novel about Michael Judson, a sixteen-year-old boy looking back on the accidental shooting death of his twelve-year-old brother, Jacob, in 1997. It also concerns how multiple people who knew and loved Jacob dealt with his loss in different ways—healthy and unhealthy ways.

The story opens with the central tragedy: Michael, Jacob, their mother Susan, their neighbor Mr. Charlie, and Michael’s friend Lucas are outside when Susan spots a large rat snake climbing toward a bird nest. Michael runs inside, gets his mother’s hidden .22 Magnum revolver, and gives it to her.

What a way to start a novel! This is one of the best openings we've ever read.

It does more than just create suspense and tension. It actually establishes a lot: the characters, the setting, and the relationships in this tight-knit rural community.

Susan shoots the snake, but when Jacob panics because the snake is still moving, he grabs for the gun. Susan, Jacob, and Michael all struggle over it. The gun fires. Jacob is shot in the chest and later dies at the hospital. No one can say for certain who pulled the trigger, and the authorities rule it an accident.

The majority of the book follows Michael in the aftermath of this tragedy, occasionally cutting away to letters/diary entries by Susan (the grieving mother).

What really stands out to us about this book is its unique farmland, outdoorsy feel and setting. These people live in the boonies with snakes and wild animals. They have law enforcement, a sheriff, neighbors, and a church (or churches) in the area, but the setting still feels small and intimate, which really fits the mood of this book.

Speaking of mood...

This whole thing is actually a bit disarming. A lot of this book is surprisingly fun, adventurous, and exciting. There are sections about Lucas's cute, funny-looking Chinese chickens, and the later shenanigans that the boys go through in the woods with Strike, the homeless man.

This is in stark contrast to the shocking tragedy that reverberates through the center of the narrative. It's like a hole in a still-beating heart.

The core of this book is really how the different characters deal with this tragic loss. This book handles it magnificently.

Michael's coping feels incredibly believable because he is caught between childhood and adulthood. He is still a kid who wants to play baseball, explore the woods, and joke around with Lucas, but he is also suddenly carrying adult-sized guilt. He keeps asking himself impossible questions: Why did he get the gun? Who actually fired the shot? Could he have stopped it? Could anyone have stopped it?

He also expresses missing the less savory things about his brother like his nagging.

That is what makes Michael such a compelling protagonist. He is not just grieving Jacob. He is grieving the version of himself who existed before the accident.

Susan, meanwhile, represents a much darker and more dangerous form of grief. Her journal entries are devastating. She writes to Jacob as if he might still answer her, and those passages are some of the rawest parts of the book. You can feel her mind circling the same unbearable truths again and again: her child is gone, the gun was hers, she cannot undo it, and she cannot make the house feel normal again.

She becomes addicted to medications and gradually increases the dosages. This gravely concerns Michael, especially since this visibly seems to be damaging his mother's already fragile health.

The book also does a strong job showing how grief isolates people. Michael and Susan live in the same house, suffer from the same tragedy, and love the same lost boy, but they often feel miles apart. Michael wants his mother back. Susan wants Jacob back. Neither one can give the other what they need.

We also appreciated how the book handles the father. Michael's dad is not written as a mustache-twirling villain, but he is frustrating in a very believable way. His anger, pride, and need to assign blame make everything worse. He seems more interested in control than comfort. In a story already overflowing with pain, his presence adds another layer of emotional pressure.

Michael's dad could arguably be considered the antagonist of the novel. He copes with loss by trying to find someone to blame and take vengeance upon. He pressures the state police and sheriff's department to reopen the case, drawing suspicion on Susan even after the death was already ruled an accident. So, just when Michael and Susan thought it couldn't get any worse, the dad (of all people) makes it worse.

Thankfully, the book gives Michael several sources of grace.

Mr. Charlie is one of the best characters in the novel (a possible nominee for Best Supporting Chracter). He is gentle, patient, and quietly faithful without feeling fake. His relationship with Michael develops beautifully through small things: baseball, conversation, presence, consistency. He does not magically fix Michael's grief. He simply stays. Sometimes that is the most powerful thing a person can do.

Mr. Charlie can deeply relate to Michael and Susan because he's going through his wife's tragic and turbulent battle with cancer. He is actually able to empathize with them when an insensitive woman brings up the subject of Jacob's death at a restaurant. The woman thinks she's being compassionate, but she comes across as rubbing salt into the wound, saying something along the lines of, "heaven needed another angel."

Susan, understandably, thinks in her head something like, "Why does heaven need Jacob? I need Jacob!"

Lucas is also a great supporting character. He brings humor, awkwardness, loyalty, and a grounded sense of boyhood to the story. His family farm, his chickens, the attic, the old train set, and the boys' goofy adventures all help make the world feel lived-in. These scenes matter because they remind us what Michael lost with Jacob: not just a brother, but a childhood.

He's that friend who always seems to know what you need when you need it. There are even times when he knows that Michael just needs space.

And then there is Strike.

Strike is one of the strangest, liveliest, and most memorable parts of the book. He gives the story a sudden jolt of wild energy. He is funny, theatrical, unpredictable, and clearly damaged. At times, he almost feels like a character who wandered in from a different genre: part comic relief, part street prophet, part cautionary tale, part wounded soul.

Admittedly, the Strike section may confuse some readers. The book makes him feel mysterious and possibly criminal, but the reality is more complicated. He is not really a villain. He is a homeless man with fear, pride, trauma, and a deep distrust of authority. His "crime" is less about some major offense and more about running, hiding, and pulling Michael and Lucas into unsafe situations. Still, he adds color, danger, and unpredictability to the second half of the novel.

Sister Sarah is another standout. She brings warmth, food, wisdom, faith, and a sense of practical compassion. We loved how she is not just "nice." She is strong. She sees people clearly. She understands brokenness without romanticizing it. Her presence helps bridge the novel's themes of grief, community, and divine care.

Michael learns that God is always there for him, sometimes in subtle ways. There's a scene in which Michael narrowly escapes a knife-wielding maniac because of a random dog and Strike intervening.

The Christian elements are very prominent. This is not a subtle faith novel. It wears its message openly: God is present in suffering, we are never truly alone, and even unbearable grief can be met with grace. For readers who enjoy Christian fiction, this will likely be one of the book's biggest strengths. For readers who prefer spiritual themes to be more understated, some of the dialogue may feel a little direct or sermon-like.

That is probably our main critique. Every now and then, the book explains its themes a bit too plainly. There are moments when characters say exactly what the story means, rather than letting the moment fully speak for itself. The sincerity is always there, but a lighter touch in a few scenes might have made the emotional impact even stronger.

Another critique we had about this book is how the middle portion somewhat drags in more ways than one. First of all, it feels long and drawn out, especially when characters are repeatedly expressing their grief (or the book is describing it). Second of all, it really drags down your mood. It's almost impossible not to feel like crap following the tragedy. But after a while, it does kinda drone on.

Thankfully, we get this whole side-adventure/escapade that Michael, Lucas, and eventually Strike go on.

The writing in this book is above average. We loved lines like "We sat together and mourned the emptiness. Moments passed without a word. So many of his things exactly where he left them, a cathedral of memories."

There's also this funny line: "The three of us hustled to the truck, desperate for something to quench the cornbread desert in our mouths." (This describes when the characters ate cornbread and it made them thirsty).

This book is such an impressive mix of grimness, humor, darkness, light, despair, and hope.

When this book hits, it really hits.

Check it out on Amazon!