The Final Target

As someone who loves Nora Roberts’ previous books as well as her J.D. Robb series, I was so excited to receive an ARC of The Final Target. When new author Arden Bowie launches her first book and reads at her first signing, she is greeted by friends, family, and people who are interested in her book. When a man named Dustin asks her to sign his copy, she thinks nothing of it. Little does she know that Dustin is both a misogynist and an all-around evil guy. He is arrested and placed into a rehabilitation center for five years for attacking Arden in her apartment. The story doesn’t stop there, though. In fact, I don’t remember reading a book that dragged on for this long just to arrive at an okay ending.

Although the story was fine, the amount of detail was grueling to get through. Sure, I liked the food references and the descriptions of new characters Arden meets along the way, but this was dragged out so much that I started to forget about the whole Dustin thing. I know this was an advanced reader’s copy, but it reads more like a first draft manuscript that needed to be whittled down quite a bit.