Book review: The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy by Nora Roberts

A battle between good and evil is always a great subject matter for a book, and in the hands of Nora Roberts, you know it's going to be a greater story than in the hands of many other writers.

The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy follows siblings Branna and Connor, and their cousin Iona, as they engage in a battle against the malevolent being Cabhan, a witch who has for hundreds of years clashed with the O'Dwyer family. As the three cousins move ever closer to finding a way to beat Cabhan, they also have to let love into their lives, in the form of loyal friends Fin, Meara, and Boyle.

Dark Witch, Shadow Spell and Black Magick are pure Roberts - a great story combined with realistic characters you love, and an enemy to overcome who you hate, as well as romance. The three couplings - Iona and Boyle, Connor and Meara, and Branna and Fin - are so compelling to read about because the individual characters are well drawn and likeable, as well as being complex and mysterious in just the right ways. I think everyone that reads series by Roberts always has a favourite couple, and for me it was Branna and Fin, because their path to love was the hardest, and not just because they're both stubborn.

Book review: The Liar by Nora Roberts

If you count yourself a reader and don't know who Nora Roberts is, then I'm guessing you've probably been living under a rock for a while.

Roberts is pretty prolific, generally producing a standalone and a trilogy every year, plus the books she writes under her pseudonym J. D. Robb, but her novels are always quality over quantity. 

Her latest standalone is The Liar, a thriller mystery about Shelby Pomeroy, who decamps back to her parents' house with her young daughter Callie when her husband Richard dies. Richard's death revealed that he was a liar and a cheat, whose fortune was built on a stack of debts that Shelby has now taken on. As she works out how to support herself and her daughter, Shelby meets the handsome carpenter Griffin Lott, but also has to face up to the fact that Richard's death doesn't mean she is free of him.

In Shelby, Roberts has created a likeable character who I rooted for from the moment I met her. She's got faults - her naivety about Richard and the way she gave in to him made me want to shake her. I think Roberts is well aware of that fact - I think Shelby's best friend Emma Kate is a stand in for the reader, sharing and conveying our thoughts and feelings, and we get to know Shelby as Emma Kate re-learns her best friend.

Review: The Collector by Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts is highly underrated as a writer, perhaps because people mainly classify her as a romance writer.

Hopefully, her next novel The Collector will change those views. The Collector is a thriller through and through - it just happens to have a romantic element to it.

Lila Emerson is a writer and a house-sitter. There's nothing more she likes than exploring new places and meeting new people. While housesitting in a gorgeous New York apartment, Lila is witness to the murder of a beautiful young woman, who was supposedly attacked by her boyfriend. But when it's discovered that boyfriend was unconscious before the woman was pushed out of the window of her flat, Lila finds herself being pursued by a killer.

See, does that sound like a light-hearted novel to you? Perhaps when I add in that Lila teams up with the dead guy's handsome brother Ashton, you start to see where the romance might come in, but trust me when I say that the thriller and crime elements of the novel are what makes it.

As usual, Roberts' protagonists are well-formed and likeable, surrounded by a supporting cast who add breadth and depth to the world of Lila and Ash.

But what I really liked about The Collector was the glimpses Roberts gave the reader of the bad guys. Usually, Roberts' bad guys are largely shadowy figures who show up throughout the book but who we never find out more about until close to the end. This time, Roberts identified her killer early, and gave them a significant part in the proceedings, which made the danger seem that much more real and upped the stakes for Lila and Ash, and for the reader.

At just under 500 pages, The Collector is a long novel, but Roberts doesn't spend chapters babbling. Every word and scene is essential to the story, even those featuring secondary characters, because it all contributes to world-building.

The Collector is a really enjoyable read, and one that people should approach without preconceived notions about what sort of a writer Roberts is.

•The Collector is released in hardback on April 15, priced at £16.99.
 
How I got this book: From the publisher, Little, Brown. This did not affect my review.

The Sunday Post (#31) and Showcase Sunday (#17)

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea and inspired by Pop Culture Junkie and the Story Siren. They're a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog, highlight our newest books and see what everyone else received for review, borrowed from libraries, or bought.

Added to my shelves

I've acquired a lot of books over the past few weeks, but am in the midst of a massive tidy-up, so they're scattered around the house! Here are the ones I could find:

Very British Problems by Rob Temple
It Felt Like a Kiss by Sarra Manning
The Collector by Nora Roberts
The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey
The Verdict by Nick Stone
The Martian by Andy Weir

Thanks to the guys at Transworld, Ebury, and Little, Brown for all of these.

What have you added to your shelves?

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea and inspired by Pop Culture Junkie and the Story Siren. They're a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog, highlight our newest books and see what everyone else received for review, borrowed from libraries, or bought. - See more at: http://girlreporter.blogspot.co.uk/#sthash.Y0TdX99S.dpuf

Book review: The Last Boyfriend by Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts knows how to write a comfort book, and The Last Boyfriend is the equivalent of a slice of warm apple pie on a cold winter's day.

The second book in her Inn BoonsBoro trilogy - after The Next Always and before The Perfect Hope (which I read before The Last Boyfriend) - this book follows restaurant owner Avery McTavish and the middle Montgomery brother Owen.

The two practically grew up together, and now work in the same town and hang out in the same group of friends. The Last Boyfriend (clue: Owen was Avery's first boyfriend) follows the pair as their relationship blossoms into something more.

Aside from the romance, there's a supernatural element, as Avery, Owen and their social circle work on building a new inn which happens to be inhabited by the ghost of a woman searching for her lost love.

As usual, Roberts creates a complete world for her main characters, with settings perfectly described so that they're visible in your mind, and secondary characters who are just as important to building the story as Owen and Avery are. The Last Boyfriend is the perfect world to lose yourself in for a few hours.

Teaser Tuesday (#2)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Here are the rules: 
•Open your current read 
•Open to a random page 
•Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page 
•Be careful not to include spoilers! 
•Share the title and author too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their to be read list if they like your teaser.

From The Last Boyfriend by Nora Roberts, chapter eight:

Nerves tickled along her skin. She hated being nervous, focused on keeping her voice brisk.

Book review: The Perfect Hope by Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts is my go-to author for when I want to read something easy, well-written and with a happy ending.

The Perfect Hope, therefore, was the perfect book to read during the cold winter days when the other book I was in the midst of was non-fiction - Kate Adie's Into Danger.

The third book in the Inn at BoonsBoro trilogy, The Perfect Hope is the story of inn manager Hope Beaumont and Ryder Montgomery, the last single Montgomery brother, the family the series revolves around.

It's not a spoiler to say that Hope and Ryder get together - this is a book by Roberts, whose specialty is romance, and she doesn't tend to keep her characters away from each other with false angst and contrived situations.

Rather than a will-they-won't-they over the main couple, it's all the relationships that make the whole interesting, like other books by the author. Hope's friendship with Clare Brewster (whose story with Beckett Montgomery was the subject of the trilogy's first book) and Avery MacTavish (whose story with Owen Montgomery was the subject of the second - which I haven't read) is the kind of friendship we all aspire to. The relationship between the three Montgomery brothers is realistic - teasing, competitive, sometimes tense, but always full of brotherly love and respect.

And the Inn at BoonsBoro trilogy also contains another Roberts' specialty - a supernatural element. Here it's a ghost who haunts the Inn, who is searching for her lost love with the help of Hope et al. It's a nice element to add a bit of depth to the tale.

The Perfect Hope isn't scholarly reading but that's no bad thing as it does the job of a good book - takes you into another world and makes you forget the troubles of this one for a little while.