The Innocent

David Baldacci's books very erratic in terms of quality. For example, I enjoyed Zero Day but I thought that True Blue was appallingly bad. The Innocent has a lot of his trademark characteristics and if you're a fan of his, you will no doubt enjoy it. I thought it started really well, but it falls apart due to an absence of credibility that becomes laughable by the end of the book.

The main character is a Government assassin called Will Robie. The early chapters establish that he's a very efficient and clinical killer. Then he gets an assignment which differs from his usual fare - a US citizen on US soil. When he gets to the target's house, he realizes that it's a Government employee who's a solo mother with two young children. He hesitates - and someone else shoots the target. Realizing that he will also be targeted, he bolts for his pre-planned escape route. Almost immediately, he crosses paths with a teenage girl who is also on the run after witnessing the death of her parents.

Up to this point the story is gripping but almost immediately it takes an unlikely turn. Instead of proceeding with his escape plans, Robie decides to go home, hide Julie the teenager and try to solve the mystery of her parents' deaths for her. At the same time he is obliged to start working with the FBI to solve the murder of the very woman that he was hired to kill. Meanwhile there appears to be somebody on the inside who is setting him up at every turn.

The main character - an assassin called Robie - is an intriguing character, but he veers between being extremely smart and extremely slow on the uptake in a way that doesn't make sense unless it's purely to serve the plot. Julie, the 14 year old girl who's just seen her parents murdered, also doesn't feel even remotely credible. More concerned about keeping up her grades than grieving for her parents and able to make deductions that the grown ups miss.

Sunrise Point

A former marine returning home to Virgin River finds love with a single mother.

 Sunrise Point was a WONDERFUL addition to an addictive series. For me, this one rated WAY up there when it comes to all of the books in this series. Be forewarned that this story goes for the heart. The romance unfolds slowly, and it becomes a beautiful friends-to-lovers romance.

Desperate for money and willing to work hard, Nora applies for a backbreaking job of picking apples at Tom Cavanaugh’s orchard, but what she ends up with is a life changing experience of friendship, family, safety, comfort and love like she has never known. But these good things don’t come quickly. While Tom is drawn to Nora, he is not interested in a woman with so much baggage. Two kids and an ex-boyfriend doing time in prison? No thanks.

Shortly after Nora starts work at his orchard, he begins testing the waters with a possible romantic relationship with Darla, a beautiful widow of a former military man he served with. She is nothing like Nora. She is polished, stunningly beautiful, educated, wealthy, independent and without baggage. Only one problem: she’s kind of a spoiled bitch.

Tom Cavanaugh was a wonderful hero, albeit a bit clueless with women but that was part of his charm. While he initially believes Darla to be a better catch for him, his growing friendship with Nora challenges him every step of the way. Watching him come to the realization that Nora was by far the better woman, and that their ‘friendship-only’ status be damned, was incredibly fun to read. I loved every minute of it.

And then there was Maxine, Tom’s grandmother and one of my new favorite secondary characters in Virgin River. I pray we see more of her, I loved that old woman and her lady friends to pieces. Her words of wisdom were well done. She helps Tom to eventually find the right answers without being obvious or pushy, she simply reminds him of what’s important and lets him work it out.

You may remember Nora from Bring Me Home for Christmas as the young lady with a 1-month old who was left abandoned in a rundown home with no windows, refrigeration, food…etc. She made another appearance in Hidden Summit as a neighbor to Leslie, where we got to see that she is doing much better, making friends, but still struggling to make ends meet. I knew I would like her as a heroine of her own romance, but I was not prepared to like Nora this much. Her HEA is one of the sweetest ones in this series, and definitely one of the most deserving.

There were other storylines going on as well, but they did not shorten the romance part down at all. Nora learns more about her parents, the pesky black bear with three cubs returns to wreak more havoc, and Luke Riordan has an old buddy (Coop) come into to town to do some hunting. Turns out Coop has an unfriendly past with Jack, but we will have to wait to see how that story unfolds. I assume Coop will be a hero or major character in a later story. I wasn’t all that impressed with his cocky attitude and the chip on his shoulder, but there were glimpses of a pretty solid guy too, so for now I’m holding judgment if I will like him or not.

I should probably mention again that this was a slower paced romance, so don’t expect any hot and heavy passion early in the book. But it does come, and it does deliver! I would even recommend this book if you want to read it stand-alone. I wouldn’t say that for many of the books, but this one could easily be read out of order as a stand-alone. I sure wish there was another book in this series for me to read, as I always hate reading the last book in her annual trilogies cause that means I have to wait another year to read more.

The Wind Through the Keyhole

Stephen King's newest effort, The Wind Through the Keyhole, combines two of the author's more masterful skills: creating short stories with similar themes in a single package, and writing chapters set in his Western-tinged fantasy The Dark Tower series, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
The title is King's eighth Dark Tower novel, although it takes place between the fourth volume, Wizard and Glass (1997), and the fifth, Wolves of the Calla (2003).
While on their mission to the mythical Dark Tower, the enigmatic gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and his fellow questers take refuge from an oncoming "starkblast," a violent storm that brings deathly cold temperatures and destruction.
Roland tells his people of his early days as a gunslinger from Gilead and how he teamed up with another young man to investigate a shape-shifter, called "the Skin-man," who began a killing spree around a mining town.
King takes the reader down the rabbit hole a little more from there: Roland strikes up a friendship with a boy whose father is murdered and tells him a fairy tale — one that lasts half the novel — involving magicians, dragons, swamp people and an 11-year-old named Tim determined to avenge his father's death.
On anybody else's typewriter, this might have turned into a mess. King, however, shows himself to be an ace storyteller yet again, spinning yarns like a favorite relative about a hero and his adventures in a world like our own but just slightly skewed.
The famed horror-meister has pulled back from expanding the sprawling Dark Tower world to now detailing different parts of its Mid-World, such as creating fairy tales parents tell children, fleshing out previous characters and employing an indigenous speech and vocabulary as distinctive as Elvish or Klingon.
It may not be as much of a page-turner as King's recent novels Under the Dome and 11/22/63 (unless you're already a Tower-phile), but Wind Through the Keyhole is a perfect storm of everything he does well.