Top Ten Tuesday. Love Week #Romance #Valentine #TuesdayBookBlog @ArtsyReaderGirl

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl

This week’s theme is Love 

Cinderella And The Duke by Janice Preston #Harlequin / #MillsAndBoon In the English #Regency #Romance genre AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

The Obsession by Nora Roberts Fabulous #Romantic #Suspense set in the Pacific North West AmazonUK | AmazonUS

 

 

 

Seaside Dreams by Melissa Foster #Hot summer #Romance set in Massachusetts AmazonUK | AmazonUS

 

 

 

The Thorn Birds by Coleen McCollough #Classic forbidden #Love set in Australia AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

 

 

 

It’s A Wonderful Undead Life by R.E Mullins #Paranormal #Vampire #Romance AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

 

Rain by India R Adams #Mythological #FairyTale style #NA #Romance AmazonUK | AmazonUS

 

 

 

Match Me If You Can by Michele Gorman #Romantic #Comedy #Internet Dating AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

 

 

Stable Mates by Zara Stoneley #ChickLit #Comedy #Romance #Bonkbuster ideal for fans of Jilly Cooper AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

 

Educating Dr. Mayfield by Rebecca Heflin #US #University #Romance AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

 

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen #Magical #Fantasy #Romance AmazonUk | AmazonUS

Sunday Connection – What’s Been Happening This Week? #Blogging #SundayBlogShare

Catch up With This Week’s Book Reviews.

Then Follow The Links To Posts From Around The Blogosphere

Monday – I reviewed romantic suspense The Obsession by Nora Roberts

Tuesday – Noelle reviewed Victorian romance The Viscount And The Vicar’s Daughter by Mimi Matthews

Wednesday – Robbie reviewed WW1 survivor’s tale Fred’s Funeral by Sandy Day

Thursday – I reviewed contemporary The Things We Don’t Say by Roberta R Carr

Friday – It was my turn on the blog tour with a review for paranormal thriller The Doll Funeral by Kate Hamer

Saturday – I reviewed novella and paranormal romance Confessions Of A Pirate Ghost by Jo-Ann Carson

Fun posts

Tuesday Teaser – from thriller The Intruder by P.S. Hogan

What am I reading? For WWW Wednesday

Plus links from around the Blogosphere

Ever wanted to write a memoir?

https://blog.reedsy.com/how-to-write-a-memoir/

Advice about querying publishing agents

https://lyndseyhallblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/in-the-query-trenches-author-toolbox-blog-hop/

Book Blogger Etiquette: How To Get Comments

http://avalinahsbooks.space/book-blogger-get-comments/

The One Thing That Will Kill Book Sales Dead—And 10 Ways to Avoid it.

http://annerallen.com/2018/01/kill-book-sales-10-ways/

Fanna’s post supports fellow book bloggers

https://fannatality.wordpress.com/2018/01/25/discussion-book-bloggers-a-publicity-team-that-should-be-respected-oh-and-theyre-free-for-an-unlimited-time/

Shannon discusses expanding  the YA & NA genres

https://shannonathompson.com/2018/01/27/na-or-ya-college-aged-protagonists/

My #BookReview Of #RomanticSuspense The Obsession by Nora Roberts @NoraRobertsFans

The Obsession by Nora Roberts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Obsession is a romantic suspense novel.

It opens in 1998 when eleven year old Naomi discovers a brutally attacked women in an old root cellar in the woods. She rescues her, takes her to a police station and is key to the arrest of a local member of the community.

Thomas David Bowes put the small town of Pine Meadows on the map; now it is home to a serial killer. He was convicted and sent to prison, and the consequences for his family were horrific.

By 2016 Naomi finds herself on the west coast of America. She falls in love with a rambling old house in need of repair, an abandoned dog and a strong stable man. But, just when she feels she can stop running and put down roots, the body of a young woman turns up and her nightmares begin again.

I eagerly read this book, from the moment Naomi set out hoping to find a much wanted birthday present, to the very last line.

I really liked Naomi’s house on the bluff, especially the enthusiasm which came from the local people who helped bring it back to life. The writing was so good that I actually felt a part of the revamp. And that’s what makes a really good book, isn’t it? One where you feel as if you’ve stepped inside the pages, where you feel you are friends with the characters and you ride every high and low of the story with them. I’m rarely a ‘dog-person’, but I defy anyone not to fall in love with Tag, from his skittish fear of small dogs to his early morning 5am alarm call.

Nora Roberts already has a large fan base who enjoy her writing style and her storylines. This one backs up her ability to make me hang on every page of her work in this genre.

View all my reviews on Goodreads

“She stood in the deep, dark woods, breath shallow and cold prickling over her skin despite the hot, heavy air. She took a step back, then two, as the urge to run fell over her.” 

Naomi Bowes lost her innocence the night she followed her father into the woods. In freeing the girl trapped in the root cellar, Naomi revealed the horrible extent of her father’s crimes and made him infamous. No matter how close she gets to happiness, she can’t outrun the sins of Thomas David Bowes.

Now a successful photographer living under the name Naomi Carson, she has found a place that calls to her, a rambling old house in need of repair, thousands of miles away from everything she’s ever known. Naomi wants to embrace the solitude, but the kindly residents of Sunrise Cove keep forcing her to open up—especially the determined Xander Keaton.

Naomi can feel her defenses failing, and knows that the connection her new life offers is something she’s always secretly craved. But the sins of her father can become an obsession, and, as she’s learned time and again, her past is never more than a nightmare away.

Nora Roberts is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 novels, including Come Sundown, The Obsession, The Liar, and Year One — the first book in The Chronicles of The One. She is also the author of the futuristic suspense In Death series written under the pen name J.D. Robb. There are more than 500 million copies of her books in print.

AmazonUk | AmazonUS

What must it be like for the family of a monster killer? Discussion Post #TuesdayBookBlog

A Discussion post

The Obsession by Nora Roberts

Recently I finished reading The Obsession by Nora Roberts. This book pulled me into the pages and I didn’t want it to end. Why?

About the genre

This is a romantic suspense and a stand-alone, as opposed to some of Roberts’ other work, many of which are written as trilogies.

The Plot

A young girl discovers a savagely abused young women and bravely rescues her.  The fall-out is the discovery of a high profile serial killer. It takes years for the young girl to get over what happened. Finally she decides to put down roots, but danger follows as her past comes back to haunt her.

A Question

What must it be like for the family of a monster killer? In a discussion thread on www.fallintothestory.com Roberts states that this was the starting point for the plot of this book. There are three immediate family members: two young children and a wife.

The Wife: What must it be like to realise you are married to someone that you find you know little about? Do you think it is possible to not suspect a thing? As the book progresses we see how the killer’s wife was influenced by a gradual enforcement of control.

If you are a wife/partner/ How do you think you’d feel if you were faced by this shocking reveal?

The first emotion is mostly likely severe shock, or denial, but perhaps it could have been anger too? How hard is it to judge someone else while setting aside your own influences from your upbringing? Have you read the book? If so, what made you like or dislike the wife of the killer?

Whose story is it anyway?

The Obsession is the story of the young girl who discovered a crime and how it affected the rest of her life, but it also brushed on the lives of so many others. Part of the reason Roberts’ writing is so popular is because she creates characters that a reader can invest in and really empathise with.

Strong characters

It doesn’t matter if you are reading a book from Roberts’ romance themed trilogies like Three Sisters Island, or a book from the  Born In… series where she writes as J.D Robb, or even her latest book Year One which goes in an exciting new direction for Roberts, it’s her characters that grab readers.

A sequel?

Some fans have clamoured for a sequel from the point of view of a couple of the other characters. Sadly for them, Roberts says she wrote this book only as a stand-alone.*  Laura Reeth, Roberts’ publicist, announced that due to a change in publishers a sequel would not happen.

Summary

For me and many fans of Roberts, the characters made this book compelling. I’m often as inquisitive as the next man about what makes a person tick, but for a book to pull me in, the main characters really need to show a strength that I connect to, especially if I get one of those ‘goose bump’ moments when you ‘know’ a book speaks to you deeply.

So, if you enjoy Roberts’ writing style, can you pinpoint why she keeps you reading?  If you’ve read The Obsession, what do you think it must be like to be the family of a monster killer?

*http://fallintothestory.com/the-obsession-discussion-thread/

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

My 3 Books for WWW Wednesday #Amreading @SamAnnElizabeth

This week I’m joining in with the three Ws Wednesday book meme currently hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

The Emissary by Marcia Meara I love Marcia’s Riverbend series, so this spin-off is intriguing

Was Gabe Angelino, the mysterious truck driver in Finding Hunter: Riverbend Book 2, really an angel, as Willow Green believes? Or was he simply a good man, determined to help a stranger in need? Find out, as author Marcia Meara reveals the truth in the first Riverbend spinoff novella, The Emissary.

An angel’s work is never done—that’s part of the gig. But angels hadn’t been created to deal with such a vastly over-populated planet, rife with misery, suffering, and general chaos. Helping souls in peril has become a nearly impossible job, and even angelic tempers are frayed.

The archangel Azrael has had enough. He believes he’s found a way to ease their burden while saving jeopardized humans, too—hired help.

AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

 

 

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman – I’m actually still reading this one,

The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.

One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic… AmazonUk | AmazonUS

 

 

 

The Obsession by Nora Roberts – I’m a big Nora Roberts fan and enjoy books in several of the genres she writes in.

Naomi Carson is a survivor. As a child, her family was torn apart by a shocking crime. It could have destroyed her, but Naomi has grown up strong, with a passion for photography that has taken her all around the world.

Now, at last, she has decided to put down roots. The beautiful old house on Point Bluff needs work, but Naomi has new friends in town who are willing to help, including Xander Keaton – gorgeous, infuriating and determined to win her heart.

But as Naomi plans for the future, her past is catching up with her. Someone in town knows her terrifying secret – and won’t let her forget it. As her new home is rocked by violence, Naomi must discover her persecutor’s identity, before it’s too late. AmazonUk | AmazonUS