Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts

So, I nabbed Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts from the library after reading her Northern Lights in January and loving it. I got as far as discovering this book was set in Maine and put it in my bag without going any further.

 

Simone Knox, aged 16, has just been dumped by her boyfriend for not being willing 'to go all the way'. She's devastated because in her head she had the two of them married and bringing up their kids, having a lovely life. To cheer her up her two best friends, Tish and Mi, take her off to the movies, but no sooner are they settled than in walks the ex with his new girlfriend. Simone heads to the loo to compose herself. Coming out sometime later she's greeted with mayhem: shots being fired, people screaming, stampeding to get away from something. Terrified, Simone goes back into the ladies to hide and calls 911.

Three teenage boys end up killing over 70 people in the shopping mall that day. Simone survives but Tish is killed and Mi is very seriously injured. Also surviving that day is Reed. He's 19 and working at the mall to earn some money to go to college. The female cop, Essie, who ends the shooting spree inspires Reed and on the spot he decides to become a cop himself. 

Fast forward a few years and Essie and Reed are partners in the police. They decided quite early on that they would not lose sight of the massacre and its consequences, and it's while doing this that Reed realises someone is picking off the survivors of that fateful day. 

Meanwhile, Simone has had a shaky time of it, going a little bit off the rails. But her unconventional, artistic grandmother, Cici, has noticed that the girl is artistic too and suggests Simone goes off to Italy to study and get involved in the art world there. It's the making of Simone who has had to fight her parents to be allowed to be who she really is. When Simone returns to live with her Grandmother and Reed changes jobs the two lives collide. But there's a job to do first: a killer has to be caught.

So there's me, holding this opinion that Nora Roberts' books are fluffy, undemanding, not that well written, and Not For Me. Fluffy? There's gun massacre at the beginning of this book that made my blood run cold. No punches pulled. I would even warn against this if you have no taste for this kind of thing. There's a cold-blooded serial killer going about their business in a very inhuman manner and sections written from the point of view of said killer that are quite chilling. 

I have to admit that none of the above are necessarily my thing but the writing drew me in and so did the characters. I loved Cici and her unconventional lifestyle. I liked how Reed and Essie worked together and how decent they were as cops and as people. Simone's discovery of her artistic talent and how she used that to heal herself was wonderful to read. Very touching. And not everyone can learn to deal with trauma and those who 'have' learnt need to accept that too.

And I must mention Maine. Cici lives on an island off the coast of the state called Tranquility and what do you know? it actually exists. I loved it. Such a strong sense of beauty and calm, of community and yes, 'tranquility'. I want to go.

This is quite a long book, 430 pages or so and sometimes I would say about a book that 100 pages could easily have been lopped off and no one any the wiser, but not this one. Roberts takes the time to go into the lives and characters of people who have survived severe trauma and to explain how we all have coping mechanisms, we just have to discover what they are and survive.  There's romance in this book, there's a very definite crime element, but most of all it's a book about real life and finding a way to survive the most terrible of events. I absolutely loved it. And I do believe I need to be a trifle less rigid in judging authors and their work. I didn't think I was that judgmental to be honest: clearly I still have a way to go.