Book Review - Day 3

Hello, Steemheads. Welcome to book reviews day 3. Every week, I will be talking about one or two books I enjoyed reading. I call myself ‘irregular bookworm.’ I love books like that, I can’t help it. Bibliophile and nerd sound too serious. LOL. The books I’ll be talking about maybe your best or worst books, so read with an open mind.

These past two weeks, the books I talked about fell under literary fiction. I want to do a little genre fiction this week and I’m starting with romance. That’s right. I’ll be looking at Nora Roberts’ Chesapeake Bay Trilogy. Nora Roberts is one author who knows how to keep a reader glued to the pages of her books. You just can’t drop it till you finish. The trilogy is one of my favourite. It isn’t just about the romance now but the storyline. It’s about the life of three brothers (not by blood) adopted when they were children. The parents – Ray, a professor and his doctor wife, Stella picked them off the street, all damaged and gave them a life. The series shows what happened when the father died, shortly after he adopted another boy, a sexually abused ten year old whom his mother sold to men who liked to touch boys whenever she was short of money.

I’ll take you on short trip through the story and also give my thoughts on them. Enjoy!

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Number one in the series is Sea Swept.

The story followed Cameron, the eldest of the Quinn brothers, adopted when he was thirteen by the man whom he was trying to steal his car. He had ran away from home after receiving another mindless beating from his biological father and vowed never to go back. He came home after his adopted father died only to find out that he adopted another boy, Seth just before he passed. The boy was the son of one of his students. She sold the boy to the father. Determined to legalise the adoption with his brothers, he met Anna, a social service worker handling the case. He disliked her at first because he thought she was out to take the boy away, but on the long run, they fell in love and the rest is history.

Here’s an excerpt:

Seth figured it was a pretty cool way to run a con.
Now, Cam. He was the one who went for the flash, who lived on the edge and took the risks. No, he didn't look so tough, he didn't look like such a badass.
Then Cam turned his head, and his eyes locked onto Seth's. Held there, unblinking and direct until Seth felt his stomach quiver. To escape, he simply closed his eyes and imagined himself back at the house by the water, throwing sticks for the clumsy puppy Ray called Foolish.
Knowing the boy was awake and aware of his gaze, Cam continued to study him. Good-looking kid, he decided, with a mop of sandy hair and a body that was just starting to go gangly. If he grew into his feet, he'd be a tall one before he was finished sprouting. He had a kiss-my-ass chin, Cam observed, and a sulky mouth. In the pretense of sleep, he managed to look harmless as a puppy and just about as cute. But the eyes... Cam had recognized the edge in them.

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Number two is Rising Tides.

This one was about Ethan, the second brother. He was the quietest and the workaholic. He understood Seth more because he went through the same thing before he was taken in by Ray and Stella. While the adoption legalization was on, Seth’s mother who come with claims that their father had a short affair with her and was the father of the boy, started demanding more money after she exhausted the one paid to her by the father. Fighting her and giving the boy a home at the same time, Ethan fell in love with Grace, the beautiful house keeper who had been with them for a long time, and her daughter Aubrey.

Take a look at an excerpt:

There were shadows in those eyes that Ethan also recognized. The wounded recognized the wounded. He knew that Seth's life, before Ray had taken him on, had been a nightmare. He'd lived through one himself.
The kid was safe now, Ethan thought as he pulled on baggy cotton pants and a faded work shirt. He was a Quinn now, even if the legalities hadn't been completely worked out. They had Phillip to deal with that. Ethan figured his detail-mad brother would handle that end of things with the lawyer. And he knew that Cameron, the eldest of the Quinn boys, had managed to form a tenuous bond with Seth. Fumbled his way to it, Ethan thought with a half smile. It had been like watching two angry tomcats spit and claw.

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The last in the series is Inner Harbor.

Philip, the youngest brother adopted at thirteen when he was brought into the hospital where Stella worked, after he was pumped full of bullets that narrowly missed his heart while he was trying to steal. He came home from Baltimore after Ray died, and fighting for the boy, Seth, he helped his brothers start up a family boat business. He met and fall in love with Sybill, a writer and a sister to Seth’s mother who came in secret to take a look at the boy.

Excerpt:

He told himself she was the perfect woman for him to invest some time in getting closer to. She was beautiful; she was smart; she was cultured and sophisticated.
And just sexy enough to make his hormones stand at attention.
He liked women, and missed having time for conversations with them. Not that he didn’t enjoy talking with Anna and Grace. But let’s face it, it isn’t quite the same as talking with a woman when you can also fantasize about taking her to bed.
And he had been missing that particular area of male-female relationships just lately. He rarely had time to do more than stumble into his apartment after a ten or twelve hour work day.

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The books are beautiful and have fine prose, as usual with Nora Roberts. No witches and magic this time ahahhaa.

Images are from my e-books gallery.

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Thanks for stopping by, and what are you reading?
Tell me your thoughts.