Nora Roberts - Identity

Former Army brat Morgan Albright has finally planted roots in a friendly neighborhood near Baltimore. Her friend and roommate Nina helps her make the mortgage payments, as does Morgan's job as a bartender. But after she and Nina host their first dinner party--attended by Luke, the flirtatious IT guy who'd been chatting her up at the bar--her carefully built world is shattered. The back door glass is broken, cash and jewelry are missing, her car is gone, and Nina lies dead on the floor.
Soon, a horrific truth emerges: It was Morgan who let the monster in. "Luke" is actually a cold-hearted con artist named Gavin who targets a particular type of woman, steals her assets and identity, and then commits his ultimate goal: murder.
What the FBI tells Morgan is beyond chilling. Nina wasn't his type. Morgan is. Nina was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Morgan's nightmare is just beginning. Soon she has no choice but to flee to her mother's home in Vermont. While she struggles to build something new, she meets another man, Miles Jameson. He isn't flashy or flirtatious, and his family business has deep roots in town. But Gavin is still out there hunting new victims, and he hasn't forgotten the one who got away.

Comment: One more book by author Nora Roberts I had yet to read. I'm saving the single titles for one a year and I had the intention of picking up a different one, but while summer cleaning reading the blurb of this one just sold me on it!

Morgan Albright is reaching her goals in life, one by one. Yes, it's been slow and only due to her hard work, but she is working two jobs and that has gotten her a house, with the help of an inheritance, and a cute handy car. She plans on having her own bar, but everything changes when she meets Luke, a cool nice guy. Right after hosting a small dinner party, her house is robbed and the invader killed Nina, who was home sick. Then, the truth is even worse, Luke is actually Gavin, a serial killer who preys on single blond women who own something. Suddenly, Morgan has a huge amount of debt in her name and all her dreams fall part when she can't make the payments. Sad and heartbroken, she goes back to Vermont, to live with her mother and grandmother, which wasn't what she wanted, but there she finds everything she needs to get back on track with her life. But Gavin hasn't given up on the woman who escaped...

I have been a fan of this author for years and I knew from the start I would like this book. Still, it was a good surprise to see how much this one appealed to me and how much fun I had reading about Morgan and her troubles, but mostly how she turned her life around.

Nora Roberts is a prolific author and has been perfecting "her craft" as she likes to say for decades. It is true some of her books take the «competence p0rn» notion to a very high level and the characters and their skills sometimes are too perfect. Other times, it seems the several elements just fit at the right amount and in this book, that ended up being my perception. I think Morgan is a likable heroine, one who is good at what she does but things aren't easy for her and this time part of the problem was how she could not control the consequences of being robbed of her identity.

The plot mrs Roberts invented for Morgan might seem far fetched but it's sadly quite realistic. With the development of technology and online banking and many other things, live can be simpler but bad people use any means necessary so this idea that Morgan was robbed and then had bills addressed to her and no way to solve things quickly with lawyers led to her inability to pay for the house she cherished so much, on top of having to mourn for her friend Nina.

I think it was easy to commiserate with Morgan and to hope she could find a better life near her mother and grandmother. In regards to this, even allowing for the fact her family life wasn't always happy because of her military father's personality and emotional distance, I still cannot really see why she and her mother didn't have a better relationship and why she chose to live so far away near Baltimore. I say this because when she goes back to Vermont since there was no money left and she had no other options, her mother welcomed her well and they seem to get along well and easily communicate, so...

Of course, apart from the emotional and financial hits, things quickly turn for the better for Morgan and she finds a job. Everything following this seems so absolutely perfect and efficiently achieved that I can't help seeing the exaggeration and the unlikeliness of this for most people, after all skill and honesty aren't the only reasons people should get jobs and other people don't, but I was invested and, of course, I wanted to see when the romance would happen.

The romantic partner arrives in the character of Miles Jameson, one of heirs of the successful family business where Morgan starts working soon after arriving. Miles is one of those loner type guys who loves his family, of course, but his apparent moodiness and aloofness hides a caring guy. The romance is nothing truly special and I kind of wanted more tension between them before became a couple but... along with the situations they dealt with, it was still quiet satisfying to follow this too.

The killer who robbed Morgan and who wants to catch her because in his mind she escaped, decides to go after her and, as always, the resolution of this doesn't feel it's worth the time it took to set up things and to have his evil POV here and there. But, some things are what they are and this author simply has this style. Since I like the domesticity of the main characters' lives and the more positive aspects, I can deal with the lack of appeal in this element.

All in all, I had a great time despite my personal preferences. It was also very easy to keep turning the pages despite the number and unlike some titles I wasn't as fond of, this one was always charismatic for me. Not my absolute favorite in all aspects by the author, but a good one.

Grade: 8/10