Recently, I read another J.D. Robb novel, Concealed in Death, and unlike the last one, this one rejuvenated my enthusiasm for the series until I really started thinking about it.  Yes, I had no idea who’d “done” it.  My suspicions were confirmed, but I didn’t know how they’d pulled the whole thing off until it was revealed.   J.D. Robb, a pseudonym for Nora Roberts, always provides easy entertainment without the necessity of too much brain power, and this provided the break I desperately needed between the first and second Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn.  (St. Aubyn created fascinating characters who are spectacularly broken, and leave a reader feeling drained. Seriously, when a book about a serial killer is considered a break…).

Concealed in  Death provided a great escape without taking too much time or taxing my heart and mind.  Sometimes you need that, but I still remember when her villains were chilling and it was a race to get to the next page to make sure the main character survived (with the shows I watch and books I read, no one is safe!).  The reader does get more insight into Mavis Freestone’s backstory which is always engaging, but I was longing for a bit more…traumatization whether that arrived in the form of emotional turmoil or physical danger, I didn’t really care.

Maybe I’ve become desensitized to the drama and excitement.  There’s plenty of that to go around in the other entertainments I pursue, but still…surely escapism isn’t the only thing these books have left in them, is it?  Maybe, I just want to be pushed.  Think harder, feel more, experience something I haven’t before.  Maybe pure escapism just isn’t for me anymore?  Perhaps, what I really need is a break from both Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb.  These go-to standards for simple entertainment haven’t lived up to my expectations recently.  Night Circus, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, The Fault in Our Stars… these all far exceeded my expectations, and I’ve got a stack of books by authors I don’t really know waiting to be read.

Now, this could all just be a symptom of wanting to change directions in other areas of my life as well…too much self-introspection for me this afternoon!

First Lines:

Neglect could kill a building brick by brick.  It was, to his mind, more insidious than hurricane or earthquake because as it murdered slowly, quietly, not in rage or passion, but with utter contempt.

 

‘Til next time,

Jessica