Now, my problem with too expansive stories - a huge range of time, too many events, too many places, too many people but not enough character building. Or at least not enough of it words, which is what counts here. I could guess a lot of this guy's character building was there - under the surface - because he had to repress all his feelings to get his 'nightwork' done in tne beginning, and this repression ended up being a survival technique. But having to guess something like this feels like being shortchanged. The characters are not developed at all. We also have insta-love which I don't recall Roberts doing for ages in her stand-alones. a well-observed drama of family dynamics, the narrator's pithily observant sister Caoimhe a particular highlight;

Pol escapes his weird family when he meets Caroline, a “debonair” violinist. The attraction is instant and mutual and the couple marry in their early twenties. By then, Pol is researching Bartholomew Playfere, a fictional 17th-century Puritan who prophesised ecological disaster. The couple spend their honeymoon on the small Irish island which Playfere said would be the only place where you could survive the apocalypse. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ I think it's time for Roberts to just write a straight up mystery and forget about the romance side of things. You can feel her itching to do it. This is supposedly romantic suspense, but it's so light on that it feels like a misnomer to categorize it as such. It doesn't help that we follow a character (Harry Booth) that is so morally grey you have to wonder why Roberts has him as our "hero." Sometimes I'm a book snob. A stupid book snob, it turns out. I've never read Nora Roberts before. Never. I guess I assumed any author who wrote so fast and was so popular would be shallow and formulaic. Nightwork blew that stupid assumption away. Now I know Nora Roberts is popular because she's an excellent writer! My only criticisms are that her writing style is changing to ‘more telling, less showing’ (with fragmented, choppy sentences rather than paragraphs) and Harry/Booth was too perfect. He’s clearly a blend of Nora’s many memorable male characters, but he most strongly resembled Luke Callahan from her early book ‘Honest Illusions’ (another favorite of mine), while Miranda, with her doting father and red hair, was a Roxanne expy; even Sebastien was too similar to LeClerc. The side characters were an afterthought, but I enjoyed Mags (who reminded me a lot of Mavis, from the In Death series) and Dauphine (who, again, was reminiscent of the female lead, Lena, in NR’s early book ‘Midnight Bayou’).Cynthia is involved with an anarchist movement which believes that “every problem that exists in society… is brought about by the hatred of the young by the old”. It is an extreme idea worth considering. What an exceptional read!! Nightwork by Nora Roberts is a standalone novel with an excellent range of characters – just as Ms Roberts always writes. Mags was wonderful, and the love she had for her nephew stood out. The people we meet on the way through Harry’s journey play a great part, some good, some not so good – just as they’re meant to be. I thoroughly enjoyed this stunning romantic suspense novel – such a pleasurable read - and have no hesitation in recommending it highly.

I wasn’t expecting to like this book as much as I did — NR’s last few have been a disappointment for me, and the last stand-alone book of hers I truly enjoyed and have reread numerous times was 2012’s ‘The Witness.’ Thanks to his love of acting and theatre, Booth is by now expert at switching identities, and escapes the country to avoid LaPorte’s further demands: he will not be owned. But he doubts this man will ever tire of his pursuit, and begins to long for a more settled existence: a job as an English/drama teacher in a mid-size town would fit the bill. And does, until someone who knows him arrives…

This is a great story: unusual, weird, gripping and riveting. I was enthralled by the style of writing, the plot and the great characters. You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. More often than not, the way that it works is that human beings come to despise prophets, just as you might come to despise someone who has read the story of your life and keeps trying to tell you about it while you’re in the middle of trying to live it.

We grow up with Booth and watch his talents as a thief evolve until he actually gets a rep (a good one) amongst the underground and attracts the attention of a man, LaPorte, who begins to think of Booth as much of a possession as the art and baubles he hires Booth to steal. But Booth has no plans to be anyone's possession. Like I said, I liked Booth. I loved going along with him on his adventures. And I felt some anxiety that he would be discovered. NR made him nicely clever and resourceful. Wow, what a great character! At the age of nine, Harry Booth's mother has cancer. She owns a cleaning service with her sister, Mags. When she was too ill to work, Harry goes with his aunt, but it wasn't enough for her medical bills, he was worried about foreclosure. Without her knowing, Harry starts going into homes and taking small things. He never takes more than what he needs and he never "breaks" into a home. From the get-go, Harry has a code of conduct.Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother’s head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash. When his mother finally succumbed to cancer, he left Chicago—but kept up his nightwork. I enjoyed this story, quite a bit, as it meandered through Harry’s life from childhood through his adult maturation. His travels took me from coast to coast in the US, to Europe and other continents. I was never bored because he was interesting and, if I’m honest, I’m a die-hard fan of Roberts’ storytelling style. While this is categorized as romantic suspense, it reads more like contemporary fiction with romantic and suspense elements. It’s my only criticism, though I’m happy regardless of the label. 4.5 stars Perhaps as a way of coming to terms with this, he looks for meaning in the past. An earnest autodidact, the adult Pol begins to research a book about Bartholomew Playfere, a fictional 17th-century tub-preacher who predicted ecological cataclysm. According to Playfere’s pamphlet The End of Nightwork and the Sundering of the Curtain in Twayn, the end of the world will begin not in the Holy Land but on an island off the coast of Connemara. Pol is so inspired he chooses the island as his honeymoon destination. He also feels a strange kinship when he discovers there are gaps in the prophet’s history: “His life story seemed to leap from his childhood to … his ill-advised pilgrimage to the island where he and his followers lived out the rest of their lives awaiting the coming apocalypse.” I want to start by saying that I tried to keep my walls up about our main character. He has so many names, but Booth is the most important. I tried so hard not to love him and failed completely. He was just a kid when he stole to keep his mother's bills paid while she fought the demon that is cancer. He was barely out of high school when he lost her. He traveled and changed who he was and existed in a world that never gave him a chance. This is a weird shape-shifter of a novel, often veering between absurdity and a comical mundanity, along with non-fiction elements and much more.