Family Drama

This book has an interesting premise. I don't think I have given much thought to how life must be for the families of serial killers. I really liked the heroine in this story. Even though she tried to avoid the connection to her father, she managed to continue on and create a good life for herself. All the characters, except the serial killers of course, are likable. All in all, it was a satisfying story. ( )

This was the first Nora Roberts novel I have read - and almost certainly the last. It starts very chillingly as the story of a 12 year old girl, Naomi, who follows her rather controlling father into the woods one night and ends up releasing his captive: a young woman whom he has kidnapped, beaten, imprisoned, raped and cut up with knives - and she is one in a long line, judging by the photos on the walls of other victims. Then it deals with the difficulties Naomi and her younger brother Mason have adjusting after her father's arrest and imprisonment, exacerbated by their mother's behaviour which constantly endangers the children's security. That part of the story was an absorbing read.

But the book then jumps to several years later when Naomi is a successful commercial photographer who has just bought her first house - one in a beautiful area of the coast far away from her family (brother Mason, now a profiler for the FBI, and her uncle and his partner who brought them up). The house needs a lot of doing up - and so commences the focus of much of the rest of the novel on various house renovation activities: painting rooms, replacing bathrooms, buying furniture and having it restored .... the list goes on and on. It comes across as a manual in how to do up a big house if you have loads of money. There are of course none of the realworld difficulties in even getting builders to turn up and give an estimate, or to do the work without a myriad of problems. Instead, the man in charge of the building firm is an absolutely sweetie and he and his wife soon become great friends with Naomi. But if that is not enough, she also acquires in short order a dog and a boyfriend - and given her past history, she has big commitment issues.

So a lot of the rest of the book is about the building relationship with Xander, a local garage owner, guitar player with a band, and book nut ... a relationship which begins as just physical attraction and goes on to become much more. Unfortunately I found some of this perfunctory and other aspects of it a bit dodgy and sadomasochistic - scenes where the hero is pinning down the heroine who is being 'forced' to achieve mindblowing ectasy are uncomfortable considering that - starting around page 248 - a woman goes missing in the local community and there are then a few nasty sections in the POV of the serial killer showing what he is doing to his victims.

I did wonder when the characters first met whether Xander would turn out to be a killer - despite all the house renovation, I thought it had to eventually get back to the early material. When it does, it veers into police procedural, with Mason turning up to help the local sheriff. The final denoument isn't that believable either.

So I found the book a really odd grafting together of grisly crimes, house and garden renovation - with quite an emphasis also on what people are cooking/eating/drinking even when they are just warming something up in the oven that they bought from a takeaway - and a 'hot romance' story. The book didn't really seem to know what it was meant to be, and a mashup between romance and serial killing doesn't work for me on any level. So given its early promise, and the fact that the novelist can write although I don't like her material, it is a 2 star rating from me. ( )

I read this on my e-reader....$7.99. I was on vacation with my son and his family. My beautiful D-I-L told me how good this book was. I couldn't start it until we returned home. It was SO good! Never a dull moment for me and hard to put down. I haven't had very many 5 start reads this year. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and didn't want it to end. I want a Xander! ( )

More like a James Patterson than a Nora Roberts! Loved the suspense and mystery and that it was longer and not as predictable! Great mother's day present from my boys :) ( )