Nora Roberts can always be counted on to write a good story, and this one wasn't bad. The thing is, it wasn't up to her usual standards, thus the two stars. Yep, I'm grading on a curve.

Any number of reviews will give you a synopsis of the book so I won't bother with that. I'll just cut to the chase: I didn't particularly like the protagonists. Well, okay, I liked them apart from each other. Fiona, or Fee, was kind, smart, and a good friend. She was level-headed and had come back from incredible adversity, and Roberts wrote her extremely well. Simon was a bit of a grump, but in a hot way, reminding me a bit of my boyfriend, actually, only probably hotter...sigh. Anyway, separately they were super-cool, but together? I didn't see it. Their interactions mostly consisted of either Simon saying "I didn't want this" and Fee mock-swooning over his lack of romance, or typical Roberts tropes in which the male tries to boss the female around and the female argues, even if the male makes sense. Sometimes it's feminist to fight back, sometimes it's just lame. This was just lame.

I love Nora Roberts and an occasional lame book won't stop me from gobbling up her books. But sometimes I feel like she must have a story generator at home, where she plugs in pertinent details and it spits out a spreadsheet saying that in X number of pages they should meet, X more pages they should realize that the angry sparks that are flying are really passionate ones, X more pages for her to argue that it's not his business to try and keep her safe because she makes her own choices...etc. Roberts' formula makes her popular; I get that. But while sometimes her formula turns into comfort food (okay, usually it does, because she's good at weaving a tale), sometimes it's just bland. That's what this was. Bland.