A review by enoughtotemptme
Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts

3.0

As with the rest of her thriller romances, the villain in this book was truly horrifying and the writing was compelling. It was a tough book to get through when the United States is facing so much mass gun violence with no response from those holding political power, but Nora Roberts is a good writer and I was interested in the story and able to get through it. However, I do feel like the romance was lacking in this book. I enjoyed both characters, but I felt like I got much more time with the hero than the heroine and knew his perspective much more than hers, at least when we finally got through to their stories in the present timeline. I do love that HE was the one who had a "love at first sight" kind of connection with her rather than the other way around, and wasn't too afraid to be honest about it. But I felt there wasn't enough to then support the continuation of that love--Simone was pretty closed off, and we spent precious little time in her head in the second half of the book. Too much of it was told in narrative of time passing as opposed to more scenes actually together. I don't NOT believe that they are a good couple, but I wished the book had done more to SHOW me that they were a good couple and that they genuinely enjoyed each other. In this book, more than her other thriller romances, I feel like the development of the hero/heroine and their romance was overshadowed by too much page time for the villain. When I compare it to my favorites, The Search or The Obsession, it definitely feels lacking. Still, a book that kept me up past my bedtime and was compellingly written.