Review: Under Currents

Under Currents by Nora Roberts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Zane and Britt Bigelow seemed to have the best childhood with the perfect home and parents, but appearances are often deceiving. Their parents, the esteemed Dr. Graham Bigelow and Mrs. Eliza Bigelow, had what can only be perceived as a toxic relationship. Superficially they were perfect and doting parents, but Dr. Bigelow often belittled and demeaned his children in public and private as well as physically abused them along with his wife. He never hit them anywhere where it might show, until one particularly bad beating that ends up with Zane suffering multiple broken bones and being arrested and charged with beating up his sister and assaulting his mother. Fortunately for both Zane and Britt, Britt escapes the hospital, contacts her aunt, gets law enforcement outside of the city of Lakeview involved and Zane is not only exonerated but his parents are arrested for assault, child abuse, and a host of other charges. Zane and Britt are adopted by their loving aunt, change their last name from Bigelow to Walker and move on from their sordid childhood with their father imprisoned for the next 18 years.

Lets fast forward 18 years where we meet Darby McCray is a divorcee who has recently lost her mother. Without any familial ties to hold her down, she sells her landscaping business and home and decides to relocate down South. She ends up in Lakeview, North Carolina, immediately feels at home in this small town, establishes her business credentials by landscaping one of the vacation cottages owned by Emily Walker Keller (Zane and Britt's adoptive aunt/mother) and makes this town her new home. Darby is new to Lakeview, but Zane is newly returned to his hometown and the two meet and sparks fly. Zane is a retired prosecutor and new small-town lawyer and Darby is his first client. Turn about seems fair play, so Darby takes on Zane as a client and provides him with plants and landscaping ideas for his new office. Before he knows what hit him, she's talked him into buying the house he's been thinking about and even has him agreeing to all of her landscaping ideas. Just when things where going good and great, Darby is attacked, then Zane's house and law offices are targets of vandalism.

this is where the story gets good and great and intense!

Great ending with lots of suspense





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