NEW YORK — Nora Roberts, “Hideaway” (St. Martin’s Press)
Never have I ever wanted to escape in a book more than the last few months, when life as we know it completely came to a stop.
We seemingly have more time than ever to do things like read the books stacked on our shelves that we keep not getting to. And yet, never have I ever struggled more to get into a book than during the coronavirus pandemic.
Cue: Nora Roberts’ latest thriller, “Hideaway,” the perfect cure to your pandemic-induced reading slump. It is the kind of book that pulls you in from the first page, and keeps you curled up with it during any moment of free time you have until the very last page.
Drama was in Caitlyn Sullivan’s veins. She was born into the legendary Sullivan family, which churned out generation after generation of stars (think: the Hanks’, the Smiths).
During a family gathering at her grandfather’s sprawling home in California’s Big Sur, Caitlyn played a game of hide and seek that was supposed to be forgetful, but wound up changing her life. The perfect hiding place was actually a trap.
Caitlyn’s kidnapping, a riveting and suspenseful ordeal that makes your heart race as you learn each twist and turn, happens at the beginning of the book. But its aftermath and the long-term hold it has on her life impacts everything: what family means to her and her relationship with her loved ones, where she lives, her career, who she loves.
Reading “Hideaway” is like a mini vacation, as Roberts transports you from the sun-drenched mountains of Big Sur to the rolling hills of Ireland to the bustling streets of New York City.
The romance-suspense hybrid, one of Roberts’ specialities, will make you think hard about the small and big moments that make a person’s life zig or zag. And how some things are just meant to be.
Sophia Rosenbaum, The Associated Press
