Title: Inheritance (The Lost Bride Trilogy Book 1)
Author: Nora Roberts
Source: DRC via NetGalley (St. Martin’s Press) in exchange for an honest review
Publication Date: November 21, 2023
Synopsis: Goodreads
Purchase Link: Amazon

Other books by this author I have reviewed:
The Dragon Heart Legacy Trilogy
The Becoming
The Awakening
The Choice (I own this one but I haven’t read it yet, review forthcoming!)

Solo Books
Hideaway
Risky Business

The Circle Trilogy
Morrigan’s Cross
Dance of the Gods
Valley of Silence (I own this one but I haven’t reviewed it yet!)

Three Sister’s Island Trilogy
Dance Upon the Air
Heaven and Earth
Face the Fire

Why did I choose to read this book?

It has been awhile since I’ve dived into a Nora Roberts romance novel. The last one I read was The Awakening and it wasn’t great? so I kind of just took a Nora Roberts break (which I have written about before in my reviews). This series is set at a spooky manor in Maine though, so I wanted to see if she did justice to the location, even if she sticks very rigidly to her plot formula.

What is this book about?

A woman breaks off a marriage to a man who she doesn’t really like and discovers is cheating on her with her cousin. They work at the same graphic design firm, so after months of harrassment and targeted non-violent attacks, she resigns and decides to go freelance. Suddenly she discovers she is the heir to a huge fortune and has inherited a large manor on the coast of Maine because her dad had a brother he had never heard of who recently died and left it all to her, the final descendant (and so the title Inheritance).

When she gets there and sets up shop for her new business she discovers that the manor is both cursed and haunted, and she’s tasked by the nice ghosts (prior brides of the manor) with breaking the curse to set all of the ghosts free and kick out the witch holding them all captive (also a ghost).

I guess this book is about believing in yourself enough to start over as a millionaire freelancer who also has to be a Ghostbuster?

What is notable about this story?

Nora Roberts gets the idea of a small Maine town exactly right. Everyone knows everyone, most have probably dated each other, and small businesses rely on each other and tourism to survive. The town of Poole’s Bay is described and set up well, and the community feels like a small, coastal community in Maine should feel.

Was anything not so great?

It’s difficult to relate to a main character who has millions of dollars and a Victorian home so big they have to close off unused wings handed to her in the first 100 pages. I know she likes to work but honestly, if this happened to me I would take at least a year off before I started my own business as a hobby. Sonya works at graphic design like she’s stuck in a small studio apartment in Boston (where she’s from at the start of the book) and trying to make ends meet and it’s weird in the situation.

Some of the nicknames chosen for the characters are a little confusing. Sonya’s friend Cleo calls her Son, which for the first half of the book made me think she was using it like an exclamatory i.e. “Yeah son, let’s gooo!” pronounced like sun. But then it dawned on me that she’s using a shortened version of her name, so it’s probably pronounced more like “sewn,” but even that’s kind of weird. Also the three generations of men who run the law firm that manages her inheritance are all named the same (blah blah the first, blah blah the second, blah blah the third) but instead of using middle names or shortened first names, they are Ace, Deuce, and Trey and I’m sorry if I was Deuce I would have something to say about that nickname because I’ll be damned if you’re gonna call me slang for poop my whole life.

Keep your fucking dog on a leash. Just read it and find out. (No dogs die in this book.)

BORING SEX SCENES oof. This was one of the worst lead ups to a hook up I’ve ever read from Nora Roberts. The anticipation doesn’t just not build, it doesn’t exist. Also I’m not wild about the fact that a lawyer (Trey, not Deuce don’t worry) from the firm that is handling her inheritance terms is who she hooks up with. NOT GREAT.

Helpless professional woman syndrome is always a problem for me, and in this book it weasels its way in through food and cooking. Sonya designs websites for a living and she can’t look up a recipe for a pot roast? She can’t make pasta? Or a salad? I hate it when a completely capable character is like “omg I can’t handle this it’s gonna be awful!” and then they are fine at it because they are independent and smart and the internet exists. Didn’t enjoy the forced femininity into Sonya’s character development. She can cook and be a technological wizard, those aren’t mutually exclusive.

What’s the verdict?

3 stars on Goodreads. It’s good but it won’t knock your socks off. Perfectly acceptable paperback romance for when you need something to read and the beach and then forget in the hotel room. If you already like Nora Roberts it will be exactly what you expect, minus the aggressive Ireland locations and rhyming spells.

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