“The day Sloan Cooper died began before dawn and ended shortly before midnight. As a corporal in the Natural Resources Police, she’d helped take down a trio of men who spent most of the fall harassing, robbing and assaulting hikers on the trails in the Western Maryland mountains.”
That’s how Nora Roberts’ newest novel Hidden Nature begins. After that arrest, she interrupts a convenience store robbery and is shot in the chest. Her “death” is brief, only several minutes, where she hovers above her body. She moves into her parents' home to recover. While there, she and her sister meet two brothers who moved to town to start a renovation business.
Just as you settle into what seems to be a story of romance and resilience, the author introduces Clara and Sam. Clara is a hospital nurse, and her lover Sam a nursing home aide. In their professions, they have witnessed many patients die and then be brought back to life via medical intervention. As religious fanatics, they believe these interventions are against God’s will and have made it their life’s mission to help many of those patients attain their heavenly home.
Clara accesses medical records, chooses a victim, and together with Sam, kidnaps them. They video an interview with each victim as to exactly what they experienced while they were dead, then drain their blood, cut up their bodies, and dump them in a well. Meanwhile, Sloan is going stir crazy, so she works to put together clues from several abduction cases in her area. The tension in the story makes it hard to put down and, of course, all is not resolved until the very end.
If you’re looking for a romance with a whole lot of crazy thrown in, then you must read Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts.
