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obsidian_blue's review against another edition
3.0
Trigger warning: mass shooting depicted.
This was such a weird romantic suspense book. Very little romance was to be seen/read about in this case. I ended up not really caring at all for the heroine (Simone) and fell in love with the hero (Reed) and thought that it made better sense for Reed to get together with the grandmother (Cici) in this one. I thought there wasn't much character development outside of Reed and his partner and friend Essie. Following the serial killer or spree killer I guess we would say reminded me too much of Robert's "The Search." There's even a similar subplot with the killer taking a reporter who had reported on the events hostage. Other than that, this is probably the first of her most recent standalone novels that I found to be good.
"Shelter in Place" follows survivors of a terrible mass shooting at a mall in Portland, Maine. Three teenage boys end up killing almost a hundred people leaving lives changed. Roberts focuses on two of the survivors of this event, Reed Quartermaine and Simone Knox. Simone ends up losing one of her best friends and staying by the side of another. Reed sees a girl he had a crush on murdered in front of him. Both of them choose who and what they are going to be from that moment forward.
I loved Reed's development more than Simone. He ends up befriending a police officer named Essie who ended up taking down one of the shooters. From there he decides to go to the police academy. He wants to do some good. We follow him from being a rookie to eventually a detective and then police of chief.
Simone kind of sucks. I felt for her at first, but as you read what she does through the years she is selfish and doesn't give her family any way to get close to her. She's very close to her grandmother CiCi but has shoved away her parents and her younger sister Natalie. Simone has also followed beside her best friend Mi (another survivor of the shooting) and realizes she is going to have to do some things apart from her. This takes her to Italy and then back to American again and has her becoming a famous artist. I get the character not wanting to be pigeon holed by what her family wants, but I definitely saw her acting like a brat a few times.
We also follow a third person who was changed by the events at the mall, but in a different way. They are determined to finish what was started. Not going to lie, I started skipping over this POV after I got past the 60 percent point because it was not only repetitive but beyond ridiculous that this person was able to do what they did after a while. I don't want to say the real life FBI are more competent than this, but honestly it just pushed away any sort of realism when you read about what is going on.
Besides these three, Roberts will shift from time to other characters. We get to follow a bit in CiCi's head, Simone's sister Natalie, Natalie's fiancee, and even Reed's former partner.
The writing is typical Roberts, but the romance is scaled way back in this one. It felt a bit like she wanted to just focus on writing a mystery/thriller with very little romance. Which was fine with me. I honestly wish she had gone whole hog with it. I love mystery novels, you can have sex, but it's not the most important part of the book. It's the mystery and the lead character figuring out what is going on. Reed and Simone had no chemistry and he had chemistry for days with Simone's grandmother. I wondered at one point if Roberts toyed with the idea of them getting together. If they had, I would have given this book five stars.
The flow was up and down. After a while the book started to feel a bit draggy until we get to the "present day." I wasn't feeling Simone's story after we get past the shooting (she really was a brat) but loved Reed's the whole way through.
The setting of this book is mostly Maine. I am honestly trying to remember if Roberts has set a romance book or romantic suspense book here before. I found myself wanting to visit again. I am a sucker for the beach and water.
The ending was moving and once again realistic again. I loved us going to a year later and seeing how things moved on.
This was such a weird romantic suspense book. Very little romance was to be seen/read about in this case. I ended up not really caring at all for the heroine (Simone) and fell in love with the hero (Reed) and thought that it made better sense for Reed to get together with the grandmother (Cici) in this one. I thought there wasn't much character development outside of Reed and his partner and friend Essie. Following the serial killer or spree killer I guess we would say reminded me too much of Robert's "The Search." There's even a similar subplot with the killer taking a reporter who had reported on the events hostage. Other than that, this is probably the first of her most recent standalone novels that I found to be good.
"Shelter in Place" follows survivors of a terrible mass shooting at a mall in Portland, Maine. Three teenage boys end up killing almost a hundred people leaving lives changed. Roberts focuses on two of the survivors of this event, Reed Quartermaine and Simone Knox. Simone ends up losing one of her best friends and staying by the side of another. Reed sees a girl he had a crush on murdered in front of him. Both of them choose who and what they are going to be from that moment forward.
I loved Reed's development more than Simone. He ends up befriending a police officer named Essie who ended up taking down one of the shooters. From there he decides to go to the police academy. He wants to do some good. We follow him from being a rookie to eventually a detective and then police of chief.
Simone kind of sucks. I felt for her at first, but as you read what she does through the years she is selfish and doesn't give her family any way to get close to her. She's very close to her grandmother CiCi but has shoved away her parents and her younger sister Natalie. Simone has also followed beside her best friend Mi (another survivor of the shooting) and realizes she is going to have to do some things apart from her. This takes her to Italy and then back to American again and has her becoming a famous artist. I get the character not wanting to be pigeon holed by what her family wants, but I definitely saw her acting like a brat a few times.
We also follow a third person who was changed by the events at the mall, but in a different way. They are determined to finish what was started. Not going to lie, I started skipping over this POV after I got past the 60 percent point because it was not only repetitive but beyond ridiculous that this person was able to do what they did after a while. I don't want to say the real life FBI are more competent than this, but honestly it just pushed away any sort of realism when you read about what is going on.
Besides these three, Roberts will shift from time to other characters. We get to follow a bit in CiCi's head, Simone's sister Natalie, Natalie's fiancee, and even Reed's former partner.
The writing is typical Roberts, but the romance is scaled way back in this one. It felt a bit like she wanted to just focus on writing a mystery/thriller with very little romance. Which was fine with me. I honestly wish she had gone whole hog with it. I love mystery novels, you can have sex, but it's not the most important part of the book. It's the mystery and the lead character figuring out what is going on. Reed and Simone had no chemistry and he had chemistry for days with Simone's grandmother. I wondered at one point if Roberts toyed with the idea of them getting together. If they had, I would have given this book five stars.
The flow was up and down. After a while the book started to feel a bit draggy until we get to the "present day." I wasn't feeling Simone's story after we get past the shooting (she really was a brat) but loved Reed's the whole way through.
The setting of this book is mostly Maine. I am honestly trying to remember if Roberts has set a romance book or romantic suspense book here before. I found myself wanting to visit again. I am a sucker for the beach and water.
The ending was moving and once again realistic again. I loved us going to a year later and seeing how things moved on.
dancingterracephantom's review against another edition
4.0
This book....so much emotion. Active shooters are a very real part of our American society, and we all have to live with the threat that we could be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, when the next one happens. I think this was a ballsy book because some will say it's not appropriate with the current climate, but I think it was released at the perfect time. With the amount of mass shootings we've endured as Americans over the past few years, we've started to become a little desensitized. Or at least, as I do, pull back from the news reports because my heart can't take learning about so many lost souls over and over again.
The beginning of this novel was my favorite part because it captured the emotions so perfectly. Roberts has this formula in some recent books where the main character(s) go thru a traumatic event early in their lives and the story follows from that event and spans many years before getting to present time. This is an interesting way to tell a story and guarantees that we will get to know the characters very well. In this story, the beginning was especially griping and emotional--its very rare that a book makes me cry, but it couldn't be helped here. I liked following Simone and the other key survivors Roberts focused on throughout the 12+ years since the shooting. It was a great way to highlight how different people react and cope and move on (or not) from such a tragedy. Its a good reminder that although survivors if tragedy may not be in the headlines after a few weeks, their lives are irrevocably changed from that day on & shouldn't be forgotten.
Once we got to the present time in the story,it began to read like any other Roberts novel. Up to that point, it read more like a JD Robb novel to me--her writing voice is different depending on the penname of course. I felt the switch from one voice to the other gradually, but by the time the book ended, I could tell for certain the tone from the beginning didn't match what I read by the end. Not necessarily a bad thing since the beginning was tragedy and the ending was a HEA, but it was noticeable nonetheless.
I liked Simone and Reed together. I liked the addition of Barney, because who doesn't love a dog? Roberts loves to write stoic protectors, and she does a great job with Reed. I enjoyed his evolution from slightly lost college student to Island Police Chief. Watching him become the man he was destined to be.
It was a nice change of pace to know who the antagonist was for most of the novel. To get into her head. We don't usually get the why's when it comes to an active shooter so it was satisfying to get to achieve that here, in fiction.
I'm a huge fan of Roberts newer books, and I'm looking forward to her next one!
The beginning of this novel was my favorite part because it captured the emotions so perfectly. Roberts has this formula in some recent books where the main character(s) go thru a traumatic event early in their lives and the story follows from that event and spans many years before getting to present time. This is an interesting way to tell a story and guarantees that we will get to know the characters very well. In this story, the beginning was especially griping and emotional--its very rare that a book makes me cry, but it couldn't be helped here. I liked following Simone and the other key survivors Roberts focused on throughout the 12+ years since the shooting. It was a great way to highlight how different people react and cope and move on (or not) from such a tragedy. Its a good reminder that although survivors if tragedy may not be in the headlines after a few weeks, their lives are irrevocably changed from that day on & shouldn't be forgotten.
Once we got to the present time in the story,it began to read like any other Roberts novel. Up to that point, it read more like a JD Robb novel to me--her writing voice is different depending on the penname of course. I felt the switch from one voice to the other gradually, but by the time the book ended, I could tell for certain the tone from the beginning didn't match what I read by the end. Not necessarily a bad thing since the beginning was tragedy and the ending was a HEA, but it was noticeable nonetheless.
I liked Simone and Reed together. I liked the addition of Barney, because who doesn't love a dog? Roberts loves to write stoic protectors, and she does a great job with Reed. I enjoyed his evolution from slightly lost college student to Island Police Chief. Watching him become the man he was destined to be.
It was a nice change of pace to know who the antagonist was for most of the novel. To get into her head. We don't usually get the why's when it comes to an active shooter so it was satisfying to get to achieve that here, in fiction.
I'm a huge fan of Roberts newer books, and I'm looking forward to her next one!
alicia_mackey's review against another edition
5.0
To say this started with a bang would be an understatement. The first part of this book deals with a situation that may be a trigger for some people but it is something we have seen a lot of in the past 10 years. I was in tears while listening to it, I couldn't imagine going through that and not being completely shattered.
We got taken through that horrific situation with two seperate teenage characters Reed and Simone both in different circumstances, then we go through their journey of finding how to live after tragedy. As always Nora's character development throughout the story was amazing, not just with the main characters either, she has you falling for all the secondary characters as well. Even the nutter Patricia fascinated me, although she was truly psychotic. I absolutely LOVED Cici Simone's grandmother she was just a super cool lady and their relationship was so special.
The story kept me hooked all the way through! Although we know who the bad people are which takes some of the suspense away, I still found I was on edge the whole time waiting to see when they'd strike.
Another thing I love about Nora's books are the settings, she has a way of taking you there.
We got taken through that horrific situation with two seperate teenage characters Reed and Simone both in different circumstances, then we go through their journey of finding how to live after tragedy. As always Nora's character development throughout the story was amazing, not just with the main characters either, she has you falling for all the secondary characters as well. Even the nutter Patricia fascinated me, although she was truly psychotic. I absolutely LOVED Cici Simone's grandmother she was just a super cool lady and their relationship was so special.
The story kept me hooked all the way through! Although we know who the bad people are which takes some of the suspense away, I still found I was on edge the whole time waiting to see when they'd strike.
Another thing I love about Nora's books are the settings, she has a way of taking you there.
thewritehendess's review against another edition
2.0
Eh. Not crazy about Roberts profiting off a real-life mass shooting, even if she changed some details. Also found it too over-the-top to be believable. But at least there’s a dog.
kateloganlindgren's review against another edition
2.0
Started out promising, but needed serious editing. Cringey dialogue and very anti-climactic ending.
alwayscharlese's review against another edition
4.0
I almost stopped listening to this story in the first few chapters. The subject matter hit a little too close to home for comfort. I'm so glad I didn't.
The hunt for the serial killer had me hooked!! And, while I'm not big into romance but I was routing for the couple from the start. I usually listen on my commutes but I listened to this one nonstop. Home, gym, everywhere! This book was a hit!
The hunt for the serial killer had me hooked!! And, while I'm not big into romance but I was routing for the couple from the start. I usually listen on my commutes but I listened to this one nonstop. Home, gym, everywhere! This book was a hit!
jfjordan's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not a fast reader, but I read this 438-page book in 3 days. Such is the magic of Nora Roberts' writing!
roanfrancis's review against another edition
3.0
I can’t believe I listened the the entirety of this absurd audiobook. The first part with the shooting was gripping and vivid. The villain was so implausible as to be hilarious. Heterosexual romance is ridiculous.
ri49ck's review against another edition
5.0
This was a terrific read. The story flowed quickly and smoothly and kept to interested. The characters were intriguing. It is something torn out of current events that reaches out and grabs you. Memorable characters and great story, a real winner.
jakiblue's review against another edition
1.0
This is the second recent NR book I haven't been able to finish. Guess my love affair with her books is over.