Why I read it: I pre-ordered this one.

CW: Family violence, domestic abuse

What it’s about: (from Goodreads) Within the walls of a tasteful, perfectly kept house in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, young Zane Bigelow feels like a prisoner of war. Strangers—and even Zane’s own aunt across the lake—see his parents as a successful surgeon and his stylish wife, making appearances at their children’s ballet recitals and baseball games. Zane and his sister know the truth: There is something terribly wrong.

As his father’s violent, controlling rages—and his mother’s complicity—become more and more oppressive, Zane counts the years, months, days until he can escape. He looks out for little Britt, warning her Be smart. Be careful. In fear for his very life, he plays along with the insidious lie that everything is fine, while scribbling his real thoughts in a secret journal he must carefully hide away.

When one brutal, shattering night finally reveals cracks in the façade, Zane begins to understand that some people are willing to face the truth, even when it hurts. As he grows into manhood and builds a new kind of family, he will find that while the darkness of his past may always shadow him, it will also show him what is necessary for good to triumph—and give him strength to draw on when he once again must stand up and defend himself and the ones he loves.

What worked for me (and what didn’t): Every year I eagerly await the new stand-alone Nora Roberts romantic suspense. Sometimes they miss more than they hit, but when they work for me they really work for me. Under Currents worked.

While I found it a little predictable at the end, I enjoyed the listen so much. The subject matter, dealing as it does with family violence (including spousal abuse, sexual, emotional and physical and child abuse, emotional and physical) is pretty brutal so it won’t be a book for everyone. But at various points throughout the story I was so tense and fearful about what was going to happen, as well as just plain happy as the romance blossomed. There are a few little romances in the book actually – more than one HEA is always a good thing.

The first section takes place when Zane is a teenager and chronicles the abuse his father hands out and how it ramps up in brutality until it reaches a terrible crescendo. Particularly given how early it was in the book, I was genuinely worried about what would happen here, which way the story would go. And this was the hardest section for me to listen to because of it. The powerlessness Zane and Britt felt, their fear, was just palpable.

I had some misgivings about how Zane and Britt’s mother was rendered; she is portrayed as both an abused wife and someone who enjoys the abuse. It is contrasted against various other abused wives throughout the story and she certainly wasn’t presented as typical but still, it was uncomfortable. She wasn’t presented as being powerless; she was complicit – both in her own abuse and in the abuse of her children. However, by the end of the book, it seemed at least some things had changed for her.

The story picks up again some years later when Zane is in his thirties and returns to Lakeview.

Darby McCray also moves to Lakeview at around the same time. Darby is a landscape gardener and sets up a new business in Lakeview, having closed down the business she ran with her mother in Baltimore. This of course gives the author plenty of opportunities to flavour the book with garden renovations and maintenance, as well as house renovations and decoration as both Darby and Zane purchase houses. I’ve come to expect this sort of thing in all Nora Roberts books these days and for the most part I’ve also come to regard them as features not bugs but I do admit to a kind of fond eyerolling-ness when it begins.

Darby has a history of spousal abuse (her ex-husband) and she is therefore cautious of relationships. However, Zane is definitely one of the good guys. He’s as far removed from his father as it is possible to be.

The romance develops slowly but steadily and for the most part there is little to keep the couple apart. They work through issues with maturity and good humour. I enjoyed how Darby steamrollered Zane (as she steamrollered everyone pretty much). Darby is one of those people who have a way; something particularly useful for her in her business when she’s convincing new customers of things they never knew they needed in their gardens. She’s not obnoxious with it so I mostly was amused by her “way”.

Zane was a great hero; very honorable, kind, generous and all the good things I want in a romantic lead. I never quite understood how he afforded his magnificent house or his fancy car or his office building though.

I enjoyed the family Zane found – both blood and not and I liked that there was some balance to the horrible with the decent people who stepped up when they needed to.

What else? The book is fairly long – with a Nora Roberts book this is something I regard with delight – clocking in at more than 14 listening hours. It felt like extra good value for my money. The narration by January LaVoy only added to the experience. Ms. LaVoy has become one of my favourite female narrators. She has a wide range of accents and character voices and can differentiate well between a large cast – something she showed off admirably in Under Currents. She also does great male voices – and she has more than one of them. Added to that, she delivers with the tone, tension and pacing of the story so she ticks all of my great narrator boxes. Were I grading the narration separately I’d give it an A, she’s that good.

Nora Roberts romantic suspense tends to be violent and relatively explicit (though I don’t find it ever crosses into torture porn and it certainly never heads into Thomas Harris territory – I’m still not over Hannibal) but that makes the stakes high and the payoff worth it for me. When the romance works well too as it did here, I make the good book noise. I still think The Search and The Witness are her best books but Under Currents is right up there with Shelter in Place (last year’s release) and I expect it will be one I listen to more than once.