Dear Nora Roberts,
Sloan Cooper is an officer with the Natural Resources Police (which I’d never heard of before but I have a lot in common with quite a few characters in the book there so I don’t feel bad). The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) looks after public land, waterways, fish and game. I guess they’re the “park ranger police” even though they can enforce any law in the state they’re in. Their focus is on education, with enforcement as a last resort. That is the kind of police I can get behind actually and I thought the choice of making the FMC an officer with the DNR a clever one because of that.
When the book begins, Sloan is based in the Criminal Investigation Bureau out of Washington DC and she, with her partner, is returning from a successful operation which led to the arrest of a group of three men who were preying on hikers and campers in the Western Maryland mountains. They pull in for petrol and Sloan is shot in a robbery-gone-wrong in the minimart. She’s shot in the head (a graze) and, much more serious, in the chest. It’s touch and go for a while – her heart stops on the operating table and heroic measures are needed to bring her back – but she pulls through.
On medical leave after the shooting, she returns to her family home in Heron’s Rest, Maryland, where her parents and younger sister, Drea, run “All the Rest”. ATR owns holiday cabins, rental properties, retail spaces and also rents and sells camping/boating/snowboarding (etc) equipment as well as offering tours. Sloan grew up in Heron’s Rest and being at home and around her family helps with her recovery. It’s slow going.
Around the same time Sloan comes home, Nash and Theo Littlefield move to Heron’s Rest from New York. Nash had been a fancy finance guy on Wall Street. Theo had been a lawyer. But they’re in Heron’s Rest to start a building/carpentry/handyman business – “The Fix-it Brothers”. Nash buys a run down property and has big plans to fix it up. He and Theo had a difficult family life with emotionally abusive and demanding parents. The brothers regard each other as the only family they have. Even though Nash was very successful in New York and didn’t really hate his job, he wants a different life. As a younger man he spent summers building houses with Habitat for Humanity and he caught the bug. He wants to build things and he’s found the place he wants to do it in.
During Sloan’s recovery, she’s offered a chance for a promotion and a move out of the CIB and Washington DC and back home. It’s exactly what she wants.
While Sloan is not on active duty a woman goes missing from her neck of the woods and Sloan finds herself taking an interest and being unable to let it go. She investigates on her own time and eventually puts together that this wasn’t the first or the last as well as the link all of the victims share. She connects with the various law enforcement officers investigating the cases but stays on the periphery and unofficially involved.
There is a fair amount of “bad guy POV” in Hidden Nature. They are a couple who have a “mission” and it’s pretty creepy.
Regular readers of Nora Roberts books will not be surprised to find there is a lot of renovating and home decorating in the book. At this point if people aren’t interested in reading about that stuff they’re probably better to read someone else. Me? I don’t mind it at all. It helps me with the sense of place and to build my mental picture of the setting. Also, there’s plenty of opportunity to drool over building options that are far out of my reach. (Nash’s ensuite sounds to die for.)
Naturally, the Fix-it Brothers end up doing work for All the Rest and thus Theo meets Drea and, eventually, Nash meets Sloan. For Theo it’s love at first sight so there’s a nice secondary romance going on. It takes quite a lot of book time before Sloan and Nash actually meet. They don’t have a hearts-and-flowers type relationship, unlike their respective siblings. Both of them are very practical, thoughtful, and decisive. Nash took the brunt of the emotional abuse from his parents to protect Theo and it left scars. He didn’t plan to fall for Sloan and he’s not quite sure how to deal with it all. (Don’t you just love when a great guy is all befuddled with feelings?)
As Nash fixes up his house and Sloan does the same to hers, as they are building their relationship and their respective careers in and around Heron’s Rest, more people go missing and the tension ramps up. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Sloan fits the victim profile of the serial killers. Readers know that eventually, they will be coming for her and what will happen is the nail-biting part. But Nora didn’t let me down.
Hidden Nature is filled with family, connections, renovations, competence porn (La Nora is renowned for her competence porn), wonderful characters (except for the villains who are just creepy and weird) and, for added bonus points, there are dogs – two! (Also, no dogs are harmed in the book so breathe easy readers.) It’s a solid entry in the library of Nora Roberts romantic suspense. It’s not the best one but it sits in the upper middle tier and definitely delivered on it’s promise. Recommended.
Grade: B+
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Kaetrin
Kaetrin started reading romance as a teen and then took a long break, detouring into fantasy and thrillers. She returned to romance in 2008 and has been blogging since 2010. She reads contemporary, historical, a little paranormal, urban fantasy and romantic suspense, as well as erotic romance and more recently, new adult. She loves angsty books, funny books, long books and short books. The only thing mandatory is the HEA. Favourite authors include Mary Balogh, Susanna Kearsley, Joanna Bourne, Tammara Webber, Kristen Ashley, Shannon Stacey, Sarah Mayberry, JD Robb/Nora Roberts, KA Mitchell, Marie Sexton, Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, just to name a few. You can find her on Twitter: @kaetrin67.
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