The Liar - Nora Roberts blog tour

The Liar by Nora Roberts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When her husband Richard dies in a freak accident, Shelby Pomeroy is devastated. But his death reveals a horrible truth - Richard was a liar and a cheat. Now Shelby is left with the consequences - huge, terrifying debts and mounting proof that her late husband betrayed her in every conceivable way.

Heart-broken but unbowed, Shelby is determined to fix her problems - if only for the sake of her gorgeous little daughter Callie. Returning home to Tennessee and the family she thought she'd lost for ever, she discovers a new sense of strength and freedom. And hope, too, in the handsome form of carpenter Griffin Lott - a straight-dealing man who couldn't lie to her if he tried.

But not everyone is thrilled to see Shelby Pomeroy back in town. And when a shocking act of violence is traced back to Richard's shady business, it becomes clear that she is not safe from him, even in death. With her life in danger, Shelby must face the lies of the past - or lose everything.

After the death of her husband Richard in a freak boating accident, Shelby Foxworth uncovers crippling debts that she is left to settle and the realisation that the man she loved and married was a liar, professional con-man and an adulterer. With a small daughter Callie to provide for Shelby finds herself having to move back home to her loving family who Richard had kept her from for 5 years of their marriage. Having to settle the estate she discovers Richard had over whelming debts and that her seemingly luxurious lifestyle was a sham, she is in fact penniless.

Moving back to Tennessee and Rendevous Ridge where she grew up as a child she desperately sets about making sense of all that has happened, paying off debts and making a new life for herself and Callie. She meets Griff Lott a local builder and predictably they are attracted to each other. I felt that Nora Roberts was confused about how Shelby would have or could have acted with Griff. At one point she was portrayed as being apprehensive about a relationship and the next she was portrayed as practically a man eater! It was all a bit contrived for me.

Nora Roberts sets the scene well with lovely descriptive passages of the mountainside and the little town nestled inside but for me she over eggs the pudding. I had already worked out the plot very early in the novel and the only reason I kept reading was to find out if I was right.

She split the novel in 3 parts and to be honest the most boring and unnecessary part was part two - it was so full of padding that at one point I almost lost the plot - really about 150 pages too long - the novel itself was 501 pages in total and it really did drag for me so much so that I 'skim read towards the end. I guessed the outcome before we even hit the 2nd part, in fact I had had a theory about where the jewels were hidden that I thought was better than the missing key that was being sought (don't want to give away any spoilers for those of you who want to read it so I won't say who was looking for the key) by other characters in the book.

Having worked out what was going to happen early on both with the romantic element and the plot line I really didn't have much to keep me going for best part of the book other than seeing if I was right or wrong. If it had been a much shorter novel I would be giving it 4 stars as a nice quick read, however the length and unnecessary laborious padding turned me off the novel and therefore I can only give it 3 stars which is a shame as it was well written and in some parts had beautifully descriptive passages of the countryside.

Overall not the block buster I was looking forward to and a bit disappointing.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.


About Nora:

Nora Roberts is the number one New York Times bestseller of more than 200 novels. With over 450 million copies of her books in print, she is indisputably one of the most celebrated and popular writers in the world. Her last three hardback novels were all top ten bestsellers in the UK and in 2013 alone Little, Brown Book Group sold over 1.2 million net copies of Nora Roberts’ books.