Come Sundown – Nora Roberts

Summary:
Love. Lies. Murder. A lot can happen… COME SUNDOWN
Bodine Longbow loves to rise with the dawn. As the manager of her family’s resort in Western Montana, there just aren’t enough hours in the day – for life, for work, for loved ones. She certainly doesn’t have time for love, not even in the gorgeous shape of her childhood crush Callen Skinner, all grown up and returned to the ranch. Then again, maybe Callen can change her mind, given time…
But when a young woman’s body is discovered on resort land, everything changes. Callen falls under the suspicion of a deputy sheriff with a grudge. And for Bodine’s family, the murder is a shocking reminder of an old loss. Twenty-five years ago, Bodine’s Aunt Alice vanished, never to be heard of again. Could this new tragedy be connected to Alice’s mysterious disappearance?
As events take a dramatic and deadly turn, Bodine and Callen must race to uncover the truth – before the sun sets on their future together.

Review:
Nora Roberts is an auto buy author for me. I don’t care what the story is about, how long the story is, when it was published, I just love all of her books. So when I saw Come Sundown at Target a few days ago I knew I was going home with it.
Nora Roberts really just knows how to get you into the story right from the first page. She makes you feel for the character, who in this case left home and was admitting defeat and coming back home with her tail between her legs, only that’s not what happened.
This story focuses on a huge family, the Bodines and Longbows, who own an enormous property where they have a ranch and also a resort. I loved the dynamic of this family. Every member does a bit of everything, but the men run the ranch and the women run the resort, with some going back and forth when the extra help is needed. The family is just such a finely tuned machine, they all work so well together, getting things done in whatever way works best for everyone. They all share their ideas freely and everyone says their piece. They’re a team and I really enjoyed getting to know all the different parts in this story.
One thing I can say is that Nora Roberts sure knows how to write romance. I hate that love at first sight junk. It’s just not believable or realistic to me. And while Nora leads us to see that our two main characters, Bodine and Callen, have been interested in one another for longer than they want to admit, their relationship is realistic. They go on dates and they discuss the important things and it happens at a reasonable pace over months rather than in five days and then everyone is happy and getting married. Along with this couple there are two others that we get to see develop. Bodine’s friend and event planner, Jessica, and Jessica’s assistant, Chelsea, develop a few different relationships, first the three girls get close and become good friends and then the more they get together, Jessica and Chelsea find themselves interested in Bodine’s brothers, Chase and Rory. I liked seeing the six hang out together and slowly all develop their relationships as a group and as couples.
I think my favorite part of this story was all the different dynamics in the relationships and characters. This story touched on so many different real life issues from gambling to addiction to kidnapping and sexual assault to losing loved ones and being far from loved ones and coming together to be there for one another despite all of these issues. I really think Nora did a great job in this aspect of the story. She talks about these issues and gets them out into the open and also touches on how family and loved ones will be there to support you through it all. She shows that there is hope to move forward and get past these horrible things and keep on living.
So there’s one character that we see in the first pages of this story and then are left wondering about her for a while before we get a few updates and then she takes her place in the rest of the story. This character is Alice. I’m not going to say too much about her because I don’t like to give spoilers. But I do want to say that Alice is such an amazing character and was written so incredibly well. The character development that we see her go through was so interesting. Going from the young girl who has the world at her feet to the victim and then back into the real world again, was just incredible. I loved seeing the family come together and each member doing their part to help Alice recover and remember who she is and bring her mind back into the real world. It’s just exactly what family is supposed to be and I loved it. It was super heartwarming to see Alice recover and to read her interactions with her niece and nephews and Callen, how each one did little things that helped her come out of her shell and clear the fog in her head a little bit more. I could go on forever, so I’ll stop here and move on.
The last thing I want to mention is the ending, which happened so fast. There was quite a bit of drama in this story, but I feel like the ending was just a bit rushed. So much happened in the last hundred pages or so and while it was all wrapped up nice and neat, I definitely think there could have been more to it, we could have been shown just a little bit more. Now, I’m not saying the ending was bad, because it wasn’t. There was a mostly happy ending where all the mysteries were solved, but I was just left wanting more, more details, more story, more of what was going to happen next. But that’s something that happens for me with most books. It’s rare that I’m not left wanting more once I get to the end of a book, but I think that’s just because I get really attached to the characters.
Anyway, this book overall was really very good. I liked it, even though it was definitely a bit darker than her other books. I wouldn’t recommend this to young adult readers, because there’s a lot that’s not really meant for younger readers. If you’re someone that likes Nora Roberts then this book will be no different. There’s romance and family love and drama and craziness with awesome characters and a fascinating story.
Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.