Review: The Next Always by Nora Roberts



Courtesy of Amazon

Title: The Next Always (Inn Boonsboro Trilogy)

Author: Nora Roberts

ISBN: 9780425243213

Pages: 324

Time It Took Me to Read: 8 days

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Nora Roberts. That woman knows how to write a book. She puts out a good 3-4 books a year and hasn’t really slowed down. In fact, I think she’s sped up.

This is a new miniseries she likes to put out between her single titles. They’re usually predictable because they center around a family or group of friends of the same sex, who own a business or have a romantic hobby. Then, you watch each person in this group fall in love. They are all some variation on this storyline and they tend to run together. You can’t tell one book from another and can’t tell who ends up with whom when it’s been awhile since you’ve read them.

This book is the first in the trilogy, centers around the opening of a B&B owned by three brothers, Beckett, Owen, and Ryder Montgomery and their widowed mother, Justine. Now, let me say, I am a tad frustrated this B&B doesn’t exist. It sounds gorgeous and a place I would love to stay. I think Nora Roberts thinks of romantic places that women would just eat up and asks herself “Well, if three women/men worked there…”

Beckett is the first to fall in love and I kind of see all the characters as characters in a horror-romance movie. You can figure out who’s going to go with whom because the characters who are going to fall in love show up in the first book. Beckett has always been smitten with Clare, who owns the local bookshop, is widowed and mother to three boys under the age of ten.

The book flows and isn’t overally formulaic. It dwells on the gorgeous details. You can really see Roberts doing her thing when the characters describe how they’re going to decorate this gorgeous B&B that doesn’t exist (And I’m still pissed about).

Even if it doesn’t follow a formula, there is absolutely no suspense. It was a decent book but I didn’t read it all that fast (8 days is looooong). There’s nothing wrong with it but it just didn’t excite me. Romance readers in general like the predictability of the couple falling in love at the end. I enjoy it once and awhile and after finishing A Stolen Life, I needed it. I do find that I get bored easily with her books, though.

 If it takes me over a week to read a book, I like it but I don’t love it. I read her books because I read her. That’s it. I’ll probably read the rest in the series but you won’t see me rushing out to get them.

Grade: B