Shelby Foxworth lost her husband. Then she lost her illusions …
The man who took her from Tennessee to an exclusive Philadelphia suburb left her in crippling debt. He was an adulterer and a liar, and when Shelby tracks down his safe-deposit box, she finds multiple IDs. The man she loved wasn’t just dead. He never really existed.
Shelby takes her three-year-old daughter and heads south to seek comfort in her hometown, where she meets someone new: Griff Lott, a successful contractor. But her husband had secrets she has yet to discover. Even in this small town, surrounded by loved ones, danger is closer than she knows—and threatens Griff, as well. And an attempted murder is only the beginning …

My rating: 4 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will count for the challenge I am participating in for April, the #ReadingMyLibrary reading challenge. I checked out this book from the Plainville Public Library, luckily for me there it was sitting right on the shelf on its release date! I’m a fan of Nora Roberts and this book in particular sounded interesting to me. Right from the beginning this book drew me in. I have to admit I was a little daunted at first based on the length (hardcover book with 500 pages!!) but it went surprisingly fast. I found the story to be well-paced for the most part. There are obviously going to be a few dry parts in a 500 page book, I’m not sure how anyone can avoid that, but the story line was interesting and the characters kept me engaged throughout.
I have to say I just fell so much in love with Griff’s character. He was just so amazingly sweet and generous and loving. He was obviously smitten with Shelby’s little girl, four-year old Callie. And I thought it was so great that Shelby had such a supportive family to fall back on. Her story really is just astounding, and heart-wrenchingly sad that she lived for five years with someone who made her feel so worthless and unwanted. That’s an awful feeling and to be constantly made to feel that by someone you love, I can understand how she lost some of her spirit. It was wonderful to see her regain that spirit and grow throughout the novel though.
One of the things that I have to be honest I didn’t love about this book was the amount of characters we’re introduced to through the course of the story. Gosh it was just too much for me, I could barely keep them all straight. And some of them had the same names like little three year-old Jackson and Shelby’s grandfather Jack, and Shelby’s father Clay and her brother Clayton. It was just hard to keep track of sometimes. It was also hard to keep track of who was talking, there was a LOT of conversation going back and forth in most of the book, sometimes for long rambles and at a couple points I had to go back through because I was like, wait who said that?