#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents Legacy, a new novel of a mother and a daughter, of ambition and romance, and of a traumatic past reawakened by a terrifying threat…

Adrian Rizzo was seven when she met her father for the first time. That was the day he nearly killed her―before her mother, Lina, stepped in.

Soon after, Adrian was dropped off at her grandparents’ house in Maryland, where she spent a long summer drinking lemonade, playing with dogs, making a new best friend―and developing the stirrings of a crush on her friend’s ten-year-old brother. Lina, meanwhile, traveled the country promoting her fitness brand and turning it into a billion-dollar business. There was no point in dwelling on the past.

A decade later, Adrian has created her own line of yoga and workout videos, following in Lina’s footsteps but intent on maintaining creative control. And she’s just as cool-headed and ambitious as her mother. They aren’t close, but they’re cordial―as long as neither crosses the other.

But while Lina dismisses the death threats that Adrian starts getting as a routine part of her daughter’s growing celebrity, Adrian can’t help but find the vicious rhymes unsettling. Year after year, they keep arriving―the postmarks changing, but the menacing tone the same. They continue after she returns to Maryland and becomes reacquainted with Raylan, her childhood crush, all grown up and as gorgeously green-eyed as ever. Sometimes it even seems like the terrifying messages are indeed routine, like nothing will come of them. Until the murders start, and the escalation begins…

Book Type:

Romantic Suspense

Review: Legacy

Author Nora Roberts sticks to what she does best—delivering romance and thrills aplenty in her latest, LEGACY.

7-year-old Adrian Rizzo met her father on the night he stormed into the house she shared with her mom, Lina, and nanny, Mimi—and nearly killed her. But it’s her father that falls to his death on the day that would forever change everything. Reeling from what happened and fearing negative publicity, her famous fitness expert mother drops her off in small-town Maryland to live with her grandparents while she traveled the country building her billion-dollar brand.

Years later, Adrian musters the courage to start a fitness business of her own. Together with some high-school misfits, she creates a series of instructional yoga and workout videos. Life takes her back to Traveler’s Creek, Maryland, and what follows is a secret she’s kept for years—threatening notes that arrive year after year. And when she finally does tell, the threats are dismissed as a natural part of her growing celebrity.

Meanwhile, a killer looms, ticking murders off a list that ends with Adrian Rizzo.

Long-time fans of Roberts will find the structure and pace familiar, although parts in the first half of the novel sometimes felt slow. As always, characters are well drawn, relationships are slow burn, and it’s easy to feel immersed in the world Roberts has crafted. The last quarter of the novel was the best, with tension ratcheting in a way that had me turning the pages a little faster.

Overall, it’s a story about mothers and daughters, of friends and families, of paving your own path in the world. And while it was a solid Nora Robert’s romantic suspense (and I did enjoy it), it didn’t feel as remarkable or strong as some of her others.

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