Musings on Romance

Tag: Nora Roberts (Page 1 of 4)

Legacy by Nora Roberts, narrated by January LaVoy

Legacy by Nora Roberts, narrated by January LaVoy. Great narration but fairly light on the romance. Watch out for some fatphobia too.

Autumn scene of trees and a river with a covered bridge

 

Legacy is Nora Roberts’ 2021 release which has been languishing on my TBR until now. While I think it is not close to her best work, it certainly held my interest. The romance side of things is very slow to start and not at all the main focus of the book.

Adrian Rizzo was 7 years old when her father tried to kill her. She had been raised by a single mother; her biological father was a college professor who couldn’t keep it in his pants, had a problem with alcohol and was violent when he didn’t get his way. Somehow a reporter found out about Adrian’s existence which led to the professor’s downfall and definitely makes him (and his wife!) unhappy. So, dear old dad pays Adrian’s mother a visit and does violence to all in the house. As much damage as he causes, he does not survive the experience.

Adrian’s mother started “Yoga Baby”, fitness and workout classes, videos and merchandise. By age 16, Adrian wants to start her own version of the business and over the next few years, becomes very successful. Around the time she first found success with “Next Generation” she started getting poems containing death threats – one a year at first.

Adrian ends up moving to a small town where her grandparents are and settling in. She’s not like her mother who enjoys constant travel. Adrian wants to put down roots. She prefers to have a streaming type service for her workouts but does videos with her mother regularly too.

There’s a lot of family stuff. Roberts writes engaging characters so it was entertaining enough, particularly with excellent narration from January LaVoy.

Adrian’s eventual love interest is Raylan Wells. But Raylan has a tragedy of his own to live through first. (I’d heard about this from a friend when the book first came out and it was a reason I delayed starting Legacy.)

The threats to Adrian are escalating and eventually Adrian’s mother puts a private investigator on the case. She has more time than the police or FBI and she starts to make headway. She also finds out that “the poet” has killed multiple women in the years since he or she first started sending verses to Adrian. The threat to Adrian is very real.

The fitness and wellness aspects of the book were the least interesting for me. A little too much information and I felt uncomfortable with some of the messaging around the topic which I felt was fatphobic.

There were multiple instances where a character I came to care about died and I cried when I got to those bits.

The romance between Adrian and Raylan doesn’t even get started until 2/3 into the book and it’s fairly thinly developed. I prefer Roberts’ standalones which have more developed romance.

There were some other parts of the book which were a bit light on – for instance, Adrian is described as having a lifelong friendship with a character by the name of Lorilee but there’s almost nothing more about it in the book.

However, January LaVoy is always a pleasure to listen to and she elevated the story with her performance. As the title suggests, the characters in Legacy are multigenerational – Ms. LaVoy had the opportunity to showcase her wide variety of voices – multiple children, teens, adults and the elderly – all genders and all different. Just fantastic.

Of course, her tone and emotion was also wonderful, as I’ve come to expect.

While Legacy wasn’t my favourite, the narration alone made it worthwhile.

Grade: B

September Round Up

Monthly Mini Review

Picture of a house with a bright light in the attic/loft window, taken from across a lake. The lakefront house is surrounded by forest/wildernessNightwork by Nora Roberts, narrated by Will Damron – A- I wrote a thread on Twitter about my reaction to this book. I’ve reproduced the tweets below rather than just providing screenshots so it’s accessible to anyone.

I just finished Nightwork by Nora Roberts. 5 stars. Excellent on audio (although I though Will Damron’s accents slipped here – I wasn’t always convinced by his French accent – the narration really was fantastic ). 1/?

The main character is an art/jewel thief. Here I think La Nora taps into the zeitgeist. Booth starts stealing at age 9 because his mother has cancer, can’t work & they can’t pay their regular bills or their medical bills. Very relatable in the US context. 2/?

He starts off picking pockets but then graduates to B&E by age 12. He’s never violent, doesn’t carry a weapon & doesn’t take everything. Just what he came for. Of course at this point he’s stealing from the very rich. 3/?

Some of his thievery is from people who’ve stolen the art or jewels themselves. He becomes, in some ways, a modern day Robin Hood (except not so much of the giving to the poor – he does public service instead by being a (very good) public high school teacher). 4/?

The villain is a Very Bad Guy. He is violent, filthy rich, arrogant, entitled. (Sound familiar?) And he threatens Booth into stealing things for him. In the words of Elvis, Booth is caught in a trap. 5/?

What’s additionally interesting is that law enforcement are barely a presence in the story and Booth runs rings around those that do appear. Zeitgeist. 6/? Continue reading

#RomBkLove Day 18: Speak to Me of Love

Blue graphic with books and a book light and the title: Day18: Romance audiobooks and #RomBkLove in English

When I thought about how best I could contributed to #RomBkLove almost my first idea was romance audiobooks with a focus on narrators. For those of us who love romance audio, we know it’s all about the narrator. A fantastic narrator can lift an okay book and make a great book come to life in new ways. I’ve said before that audio is a transformative medium. The listener experiences the story through the lens of the characterisation, tone, pacing and pitch of the narrator. When they get it right, it’s magic.

There are many brilliant narrators. My list of favourites is long but I’ve chosen just 6 to highlight today, paired with some of my favourite audiobooks from their catalogues. Continue reading

Under Currents by Nora Roberts, narrated by January LaVoy

A small rowboat is tied up at a wooden dock surrounded by reeds, on a lake at sunset, the colours are purples and redsWhy 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.
Continue reading

Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts, narrated by January LaVoy

Blue-washed night view of a rocky coastline with a lighthouse off to the right of viewWhy I read it:  I always buy Nora’s stand alone romantic suspense books. This one is from my own TBL.

TW: Mass shooting

What it’s about: (from Goodreads)  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 the video-game store tending 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, hopelessly 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.

What worked for me (and what didn’t): Like The Witness in structure, Shelter in Place tracks the main characters from youth, dipping in and out of their timelines until we reach present day. Unlike The Witness, Shelter in Place follows not only the heroine, but also the hero. It is a long time before Simone Knox and Reed Quartermaine actually meet. Though they are both at the DownEast Mall on the night of the shooting, they don’t know each other and their lives take different trajectories for many years. I’m all about the HEA of course so one could be forgiven for thinking this bothered me. But the story hooked me from the opening seconds and for the most part I was too busy being engrossed in what was happening to be tapping my foot impatiently for the main characters to finally meet. Because Nora Roberts is the just that good, it was about the time that I started to feel a little antsy that my HEA-loving heart was blessed with Reed and Simone in the same room. From there, the romance progressed pretty smoothly – the conflict here is not about the relationship. It is all serial-killer based. Continue reading

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