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A review by lassarina
Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts
5.0
This book hits on a lot of really tough themes and it wasn't an easy read. I know it's billed as a romance, and there is a love story. Though the romance is sweet, it seems like an afterthought. The core of the book is about healing, and the very different ways different people cope with the trauma of an event like this. It unfolds over almost fifteen years as people grow up and handle (or don't) the aftermath of the shooting.
It also delves into the rage and unraveling of the mastermind behind the original mall shooting (and that character is described brilliantly, even if every second that character was on screen I was frothing with rage and not able to articulate how much I despised every thought the story laid out.) It is not pretty. There is a lot of racism, and anti-LGBT sentiment, and anti-Semitism, and while the context of the story makes it clear that the person thinking thus is wrong, and that those thought patterns are gross, they're presented with a chilling matter-of-factness that makes my skin crawl off my bones in the current political climate (I had this reaction to Come Sundown last year as well, for many of the same reasons.)
I absolutely adore Simone and Reed as characters, even if I frown at a few of Reed's choices (while absolutely understanding why he makes them). The supporting cast is also great - Simone's family are incredibly well-drawn, if not always likeable. I did kind of want to see more of the other survivors and their healing process, but if all of that had been in here the book would've been too long, and as it was, there's a lot here. I blitzed through it in a weekend and spent the first 100 or so pages just crying in the work lunch room as I got through the opening scene, which is the shooting. It grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.
This isn't an easy book to read, and I like that, because this topic isn't easy and it shouldn't be. We have a lot to wrestle with as a society and this book teases that out in a lot of great ways.
It also delves into the rage and unraveling of the mastermind behind the original mall shooting (and that character is described brilliantly, even if every second that character was on screen I was frothing with rage and not able to articulate how much I despised every thought the story laid out.) It is not pretty. There is a lot of racism, and anti-LGBT sentiment, and anti-Semitism, and while the context of the story makes it clear that the person thinking thus is wrong, and that those thought patterns are gross, they're presented with a chilling matter-of-factness that makes my skin crawl off my bones in the current political climate (I had this reaction to Come Sundown last year as well, for many of the same reasons.)
I absolutely adore Simone and Reed as characters, even if I frown at a few of Reed's choices (while absolutely understanding why he makes them). The supporting cast is also great - Simone's family are incredibly well-drawn, if not always likeable. I did kind of want to see more of the other survivors and their healing process, but if all of that had been in here the book would've been too long, and as it was, there's a lot here. I blitzed through it in a weekend and spent the first 100 or so pages just crying in the work lunch room as I got through the opening scene, which is the shooting. It grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.
This isn't an easy book to read, and I like that, because this topic isn't easy and it shouldn't be. We have a lot to wrestle with as a society and this book teases that out in a lot of great ways.