Carolina Moon by Nora Roberts
Carolina Moon by Nora Roberts
[image error]This novel has all the ingredients of a Roberts novel. A young girl, Hope, is raped and murdered in the first few pages and the killer isn’t revealed until the very end.
Hope’s death affects her best friend, Tory, her twin sister, Faith, her brother, Cade, and many others as everyone copes with their personal demons.
Tory was planning to meet Hope in the swamp between their homes. Hope lived in a mansion while Tory lived in a shack with her abusive and religious father who beat her so badly that night, she couldn’t join Hope, but Tory has special powers to share feelings with the people she knows or touches and experienced everything Hope felt the night of her death. She leads her family to her body in the morning.
Years pass and Tory returns to her family home to face her past and start fresh. But she realizes other women have died by Hope’s killer, but she can’t see his face to identify him. She falls in love with Cade and befriends Faith as she rebuilds her life.
Roberts explores each character’s emotional battles and gives each one growth and triumph over their personal demons. This is her forte. She uses her settings for mood and as a part of the story. She gives the reader a place to dwell during the story and characters to root for as they uncover the past and build a future.
As in other of her novels, the obvious bad guy is revealed before the secret killer and taken care of in a fitting way. Roberts also gives the female character the power to save herself instead of being rescued by a knight in shining armor.
Writers can learn how to write a complex and layered character from Roberts. She gives each of them a detailed back story and a growth curve that begins with a broken person and through experiences and friendships, grows into a complete and healthy person. Even minor characters have dimension. She also uses humor with description and behavior of more than one character. She also seems to always have a dog or two in the story.
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