UGH! I wrote this review at the end of April and never published it, just found it sitting ever so quietly amongst other unpublished posts. I’m sure I started it and thought, oh, I have so much time before the publication date. Pooohey. Silly quiet posts. They really need to speak up so they can get published. 😉

Shelter in Place

Nora Roberts

St. Martin’s Press

May 29, 2018

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Blurb From Nora Roberts, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Year One (December 2017), comes Shelter in Place—a powerful tale of heart, heroism . . . and propulsive suspense.

It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at video game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived.

The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever. In the years that followed, one would dedicate himself to a law enforcement career. Another would close herself off, trying to bury the memory of huddling in a ladies’ room, helplessly clutching her cell phone–until she finally found a way to pour her emotions into her art.

But one person wasn’t satisfied with the shockingly high death toll at the DownEast Mall. And as the survivors slowly heal, find shelter, and rebuild, they will discover that another conspirator is lying in wait–and this time, there might be nowhere safe to hide.

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SASCHA DARLINGTON’S REVIEW

5 of MY facts about Shelter in Place:

1. I had the misfortune of starting to read Shelter in Place just a week after the Parkland shootings. I know I shed tears and wondered if I wanted to keep reading.
2. If you asked me to guess the author of this novel, I would have failed.
3. From beginning to end, this is a page-turner, filled with memorable characters, soul searching, and awareness.
4. Cici is one of the richest characters I’ve read about in a long time. Here’s to women over 50 who are vivacious, vibrant, and attractive both in body and heart.
5. Reed is one of the sexiest men in any novel I’ve encountered in the past year; forget the qualification, in all of my reading. He’s smart. He’s loyal. He’s good. He listens. He makes friends with most everyone. He befriends an abused dog, and the dog loves him, and if the dog loves him…

I used to read a lot of Nora Roberts’ romances. She knew how to engage her reader with a winning combination of humor, good writing, intelligent characters with sex appeal and unusual jobs or something whimsical, which I adored.

Years back I pretty much stopped reading most romances. I found Roberts’ had become a little flowery (or something) for me, which is why I would never have guessed that Shelter in Place was written by her. The prose is succinct, nothing flowery here. And I liked it because it was so very readable and fit the subject matter.

There will be some readers who are offended by the fact that the book starts with a mass shooting. They will say that it glorifies an all-too-common and unfortunate situation in the US. However, Shelter in Place doesn’t really do that. True, it starts out with a mass shooting, but it goes far beyond, involving victims and a sinister face behind the scenes. There is soul searching. There is a real picture of people trying to recover their lives.

I won an ARC copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Buylink:  Shelter in Place

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