Review of Nora Roberts' Shelter in Place
Nora Roberts’ Shelter in Place, published by St Martin’s Paperbacks, copyright 2018 has it all: romantic thriller, art, suspense, politics, travel, and generational relationships. It spans the time of 13 years in a 500+ page paperback. My copy was well loved, and has been passed from friend to friend to friend. As a matter of fact, by the time I got it, we had to put rubber bands around the book so that we did not lose the pages.
What impressed me the most about this book is the research Nora Roberts had to put into it in order to write the story. The detail about being an artist, especially in clay, and the bronzing process, was detailed, on point, and showed critical information in a terrific way. I could almost feel the clay moving through my fingers, feel the searing heat as the molten bronze moved through the mold.
It is pretty rare to have a serial killer as a woman, let alone a teenager. The ability to hone her psychotic tendencies without her parents knowing is terrifying. To talk about mass murders by teenagers in a mall dip into the politics of gun control, and masterfully sways even the most gun-rights activists to re-think their ideals.
I read this in an afternoon and a day, without skipping ahead nor reading the end first. I did not want to miss a single detail, from the harrowing first eight minutes to the finding of a puppy’s name. I felt similar feelings with the relationship of my sister, and the revelations at the end when they mended at the end. The relationship with the cool grandmother and the male cop were happy and enthralling, and provided good comedy relief. The sex scenes were perfectly on tune with the rest of the book.
It was sad to read about so many people dying, and I did wish she explained the arc at the end a little better, so that I could have “seen” it. All in All, I found this book to be one of her better ones, and plan to pass it on to my friends tomorrow, with a note about the rubber bands.
