One Book Too Many

Although I've never been a huge fan of Nora Roberts, I have a few of her books on my keeper shelf. The last of her books that I really loved were the Chesapeake books - I gave two of them a grade of 5, which is almost unprecedented for me. Could a sequel to this beloved series be anything but a disappointment?

Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts
(2002, Contemporary) 1/4/07
Grade: 2.5

In the final book in the Chesapeake series, Nora Roberts tells the story of Seth, the abandoned boy who brought the brothers together in the previous books. Now, Seth is an accomplished artist, who has come home after years in Europe. He’s running from his past - but can he find happiness with flower shop owner Dru Banks, who has a past of her own?

Although Roberts is always readable, this was a tedious book. It seemed like nothing but “the minor problems of the pretty people”. Everyone in the book is practically perfect, which gets boring after a while. The book spends a lot of time visiting with all the characters from the previous books. They’re all happy, wise and very, very nice, of course. Seth and Dru have a few minor problems, but they seem like “much ado about nothing”, especially in the face of all that niceness. I enjoyed the previous books in this series, but this one is more like “old home week” than a real story. Too bad, because I really loved the previous books.

Whenever anyone asks me about the pitfalls of writing connected romances, I'll point to this book. By the time you get to the final book in the series, all the characters are so beloved that you can't do anything but overload on saccharine niceness.