Title: Legacy
Author: Nora Roberts
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: May 21, 2021
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ASIN: B08FGVFNP7
Adrian Rizzo was seven when she met her father for the first time. That was the day he nearly killed her—before her mother, Lina, stepped in.
Soon after, Adrian was dropped off at her grandparents’ house in Maryland, where she spent a long summer drinking lemonade, playing with dogs, making a new best friend—and developing the stirrings of a crush on her friend’s ten-year-old brother. Lina, meanwhile, traveled the country promoting her fitness brand and turning it into a billion-dollar business. There was no point in dwelling on the past.
A decade later, Adrian has created her own line of yoga and workout videos, following in Lina’s footsteps but intent on maintaining creative control. And she’s just as cool-headed and ambitious as her mother. They aren’t close, but they’re cordial—as long as neither crosses the other.
But while Lina dismisses the death threats that Adrian starts getting as a routine part of her daughter’s growing celebrity, Adrian can’t help but find the vicious rhymes unsettling. Year after year, they keep arriving—the postmarks changing, but the menacing tone the same. They continue after she returns to Maryland and becomes reacquainted with Raylan, her childhood crush, all grown up and as gorgeously green-eyed as ever. Sometimes it even seems like the terrifying messages are indeed routine, like nothing will come of them. Until the murders start, and the escalation begins...
My rating:
Adrian Rizzo was seven when she met her father on the day he tried to kill her. It was he who died instead and she spent the summer recuperating in Maryland with her grandparents, forging the first real friendship, developing her first real crush.
Throughout the years, she cultivated the friendship, creating new and lasting ones, sharing joy and heartache, happiness and grief, until she moves back to Maryland to care for her ailing, widowed grandfather. Her best friend follows, creating a close-knit circle and that long-ago childhood crush starts developing into something more.
But the threat spawned on that fateful day when she was seven grows closer and closer as her personal, morbid poet that's been haunting her for more than a decade, draws closer and closer.
I don't call Nora Roberts a master of her craft for nothing. She has this uncanny ability to paint so vividly with her words that turns most of her novels into a beautiful, ever-evolving, moving picture.
This books was no different. We spent more than two decades alongside Adrian Rizzo, saw her forming bonds of friendship that would span decades, traveled with her from D.C. to Maryland, to New York City and back to Maryland, saw glimpses of her friends and family sprinkled in between, saw joy and pain, happiness and grief, experienced it all with them, until (almost) everybody reconvened back in Maryland, forming a little family that went beyond blood. This helped the reader know and relate to the characters, empathize with them, feeling like a part of that family.
I love how Nora Roberts writes relationships, especially female friendships, and interactions between characters. The banter, the humor, the care...You can see how they feel about each other, their care for one another, you can feel the bonds that tie the characters together.
It's the characters that drive these stories forwards, that propel the plot, not the actions around them. It's the characters and their connections that's at the heart of these stories.
I was beyond glad that Adrian wasn't one of the usual NR heroines. You know, the rather bitchy, emotionally-stilted, keep-out-sign wearing ones. She was ambitious, yes, but she wasn't mean, rude or a stone bitch to those around her. Which was a surprise, seeing the sort of distant mother she had. But it all comes down to the roots, and Adrian had hers with her grandparents that loved each other and loved her, were loved and respected in their community...So the girl turned out just fine.
Raylan was your regular NR hero, and you'll hear no objection to that from me. His story had a twist, though, a rather pleasant one from the usual I-was-married-before-but-it-didn't-work spiel, but one that made the romance promised by the blurb rather impossible, but tragedy tends to clear the slate. I loved his personality, his affability, his dad-ness. Utterly adorable and understandable just why Adrian ended up falling for him.
The supporting cast was awesome, as always; the connections, the relationships, the interactions, the humor, the banter...Everything worked and flowed perfectly together.
And then there was the suspense. Rather subtle in the beginning, just a twinge here and there, but slowly, inexorably escalating. Those scenes, interspersed with the rather peaceful tableaus of Adrian's obvlivious-to-the-real-peril life in Maryland, were chilling and page-turning and I'm more than glad the reveal of the villain took so long. The guessing game was compelling and intriguing and the final showdown action-packed and stressful.
I loved it from beginning to end.
5 stars, contemporary, contemporary romance, Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, suspense/mystery/adventure/thriller
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment