A new season of Trilogy Time begins

Well, I’m back from my Memorial Day break and hope everyone had a good start off to the summer there.

My summer of reading is starting with the completion of round one of Trilogy Time as the last book in Nora Roberts’ Irish Born, Born in Shame, was on my shelf before the holiday officially began!

For this tail end of the literary trio, we meet American born Shannon Bodine, who learns from her dying mother that her biological father is Tom Concannon, not the man who married her outcast mother and raised her as his own.

After her mother’s passing, Shannon is notified about her half sisters in Ireland, with Brianna extending an invitation to her B&B for a visit. 

Feeling overwhelmed by both the secrets revealed and the angry last conversation with her mom, Shannon decides to take some time off from her work as a corporate graphic designer and head over to Ireland for a brief visit.

That visit turns out to be much longer than she had planned, partly due to Murphy, the original boy next door to the Concannon sisters. He takes one look at Shannon and is completely thunderstruck, no doubt in his mind that she’s the one he’s been waiting for.

They do have chemistry but I have to admit that there were moments(such as arranging for Shannon to meet his entire family all at once!)that I wanted to say to Murphy-“Dude, slow your roll a little! She’s dealing with her mom’s death plus learning about a whole new family that is trying to get to know her as much as she’s trying to get to know them and figure out what is next for her in life, step back a bit, my guy!”

Murphy is a good guy, don’t get me wrong and yes, this book was released in the late nineties so some allowances in the romance department for the time period are needed. To be fair, Shannon is up front with him about her feelings regarding her current state of flux and for the most part, he does respect her wishes.

However, when they finally do connect, the relationship feels well earned and you do root for them to get together in a way that is best for them both:

As for the rest of the story, I do like Shannon and how well she fit in with the Concannon sisters, even to the point of handling their temperamental mother Maeve(who was understandably upset about the news about what her late husband did but not to take it out on an innocent party there).

That’s what I find most engaging about Nora Roberts and her writing; she takes the time to fully develop her characters and devotes good portions of the plot to the central person discovering what they really want beyond a love interest. 

For example , in this book, Shannon comes to realize that her talent for painting is more that just a sideline to her professional work,not to mention something she has in common with her cantankerous yet loving sister Maggie May(who is more like her mother Maeve than she cares to admit).

Also, the whole cast of characters just grows on you and I don’t know if the Concannon family shows up in any of other books that Roberts has written (you could fill a whole public library all of her various novels in various genres !) but I wouldn’t mind running into them again, even the misery loving Maeve.

So, I completed my first prompt for this challenge, which was to read an author that’s new to me and yes, I do like Nora Roberts and wonder what took me so long to check her out(my own foolishness, of course). At the moment, I’m reading one of her standalone novels-Hideaway-and having a good time with it. Granted, there are way too many of her series to fully catch up on but I do plan to add more of her works to future TBRs.

I am curious to try one of her paranormal stories as we did get a hint of that with Born in Shame as Shannon and Murphy shared dreams regarding a local legend of a doomed love between a knight and a woman waiting for him in the midst of sacred stones. That ancient tale was hinted at beforehand in the earlier books but was highlighted strongly in this finale so seeing what Roberts does in a full on fantasy should be fun:

With that, my summer reading is fully underway as I have a Book of the Month Club box on the way plus my Sci-Fi Summer of Romantasy reading got off to a fine start with Half a Soul(which helps make the wait for the second half of Bridgerton S3 all the easier) and onto my next Trilogy Time prompt of rereading an author you know well.

My pick for that was Adriana Trigiani’s Valentine trio that begins with  Very Valentine , which introduces you to Valentine Roncalli, a woman determined to save the family custom made shoe business and find love on her own terms.  This was the first book that I read by Trigiani and being reacquainted like this is truly a pleasure indeed: