ShayKay's Review of Hideaway by Nora Roberts

Goodreads: Hideaway by Nora Roberts

Synopsis From Book

A family ranch in Big Sur country and a legacy of Hollywood royalty set the stage for Nora Roberts's emotional new suspense novel.

Caitlyn Sullivan came from a long line of Hollywood royalty, stretching back to her Irish immigrant great-grandfather. At nine, she was already a star - yet still, an innocent child who loved to play hide-and-seek with her cousins at the family home in Big Sur. It was during one of those games that she disappeared.

Some may have considered her a pampered princess, but Cate was in fact a smart, scrappy fighter, and she managed to escape her abductors. Callan Cooper was shocked to find the bloodied, exhausted girl huddled in his house - but when the teenager and his family heard her story, they provided refuge, reuniting her with her loved ones. 

Cate's ordeal, though, was far from over. First came the discovery of a shocking betrayal that would send someone she'd trusted to prison. Then there were years spent away in western Ireland, peaceful and protected but with restlessness growing in her soul.

Finally, she would return to Los Angeles, gathering the courage to act again and get past the trauma that had derailed her life. What she didn't yet know was that two seeds had been planted that long-ago right - one of a great love, and one of terrible vengeance.

My Book Aesthetic for Hideaway by Nora Roberts, I'll explain each picture at the end of the post along with a spoiler tag so if you don't want to know why some these things are on here you don't have too.

Thoughts Before Reading

I cannot wait to jump into this book. Roberts/Robb has become one of my all-time favorite authors and I have been dying to go to one of her book signings at Turn the Page Bookstore in Boonsboro, Maryland but the last few times I've tried to go something comes up causing me not able to go or I just don't have the money. It's only a four-hour drive from where I live and eventually, I'll make it there for a book signing in person but for now, I was able to preorder my book and when you preorder a book from Roberts on Turn the Page's website you can get her autograph! I'm in love with my book. I actually just got back from the beach and I was hoping that I would've had the book to take with me to the beach but it got here the day after I left. But it's okay it was a bonus for when I got to the house!  Here is a picture of what the signature looks like! I'm in love with it I cannot wait to jump into the book! I plan on it being my next read and even though it is a chunker I usually fly through her books. This one sounds like an amazing read! I'm going to try to do a book aesthetic for it. I'm trying to get a little more in my Instagram posts instead of just my BOTM reading challenges. I should be able to do the middle of the booked check-in too along with final thoughts! So let's see what happens! As always I'll try to stay spoiler-free and I'll make sure to post spoiler alerts if anything comes up that I can't avoid talking about.

 Halfway Through Thoughts

I'm obsessed with this book! I love the characters and the suspense that keeps getting thrown at me! It reminds me of a lot of Shelter in Place, which is my all-time favorite Nora Roberts book! Keep in mind I said Nora Roberts because Naked in Death is my all-time favorite JD Robb book and if the two were in a competing ring against each other I'd have to go with Naked in Death since it started my obsession for Robb/Roberts and this series is tied with Harry Potter in my book as all-time favorite series. Anyways I tend to really love celebrity books like Hideaway because they just open up a world that I personally find so fascinating and this book is no different. I kind of think it takes a new look at this aspect because we are looking at a celebrity dynasty and you aren't watching Cate get famous if anything we are watching her learn how to be just Cate and its refreshing take on the whole celebrity trope. The Sullivans and the Coopers are amazing! It's like they are their own two stories and I love how they merge together so seamlessly. I feel like every time I think the book is going to do one thing it does the completely opposite thing. I'm so curious to know what happens with Dillon Cooper because I was so freaking sure that they were going to end up together but how are they going to do that now!? 

Cate has been a character that I have found really interesting, she's not the hard to love character. She's so far been really interesting and hard to NOT love. She's so likable and you really are rooting for her the whole entire time so far. So far whenever she tries to settle down and live her life that is when everything goes bonkers and poor Cate is just always stuck in the middle of it all. As of right now, I don't know how this book wouldn't be a 5-star read! I mean I just said that I think this is going to beat Shelter in Place which is my favorite Roberts book! I just have to wait and see what happens! I should be done soon because I CANNOT PUT THIS THING DOWN!

Final Thoughts 

*****SPOILERS BELOW*****

Umm, so it got rough! I hate looking back at how I felt in the middle of the book and now looking at it I can't understand what went wrong. I was so in love with this book and could not put it down because it was so intense and such a good read but then it just blew up! So let's start with what has been annoying me with this book since our last check-in. First, the bad guys are so aggravating in this book. They are definitely characters that were written to hate them, which works out perfectly since they are the bad guys. But I mean they got to the point where they were out for revenge and was blaming Cate for doing everything that they chose to do to her. Since finishing this book I've come to realize that they weren't blaming Cate, he was actually trying to get revenge on the mother and that makes more sense but it was so hard to get through everything that they were doing to Cate because they were either power-hungry or fame-hungry. Now that could just annoy me but it is an annoyance that I could live with, it didn't even bother me until it got so repetitious and I just started seeing it coming instead of being shocking and suspenseful. Another thing that started to get really annoying for me is that the point of view started getting really hard to tell apart. Now, this is something that is very typical of Roberts writing and the POVs change rapidly all the time. It's just how she writes, at least these books. I've always had issues figuring out which POV I'm in but it usually gets really easy to tell who is who apart as the book goes along and it becomes not an issue. But this book wasn't the case. Instead, it just got really hard to tell who was whose point of view. But again it's an annoyance that I could've lived with because I was really enjoying the book regardless of whose point of view I was in and eventually I always figured it out. But it also became really prevalent towards the end of the book and at this point, I was just really annoyed with the book in general, and that is when everything that wouldn't normally bother me started bothering me. The biggest thing that really got to me is the fact that the book felt like it was trying to fit so much in and it tried rushing to get it all in but at the same time I was missing things that I would've loved to read about. For example, Cate was in New York and she had a serious boyfriend and when that relationship ends we did a time jump to her living in Big Sur now which is fine. But while reading it felt like she came to that conclusion pretty fast after the breakup and they even had a little moment of closure where they were able to run into each other and talk about everything that happened. But in reality, it turned out that Cate even dated another guy after that break up who was abusive plus dated another actor! But we only learn about it when she was talking to Dillon about their past dating history. I get that we wouldn't have seen Dillon's past since he wasn't the main character and that's fine. But the fact that Cate was the main character and we didn't get to see key moments in her life and just told about it after the fact got really annoying and this happened a lot towards the end. These time jumps just got too overwhelming in the end! I personally got so aggravated with it. Then the cherry on top I hated the ending of the book. I felt like we built up so much of Cate's life just for the ending to be thrown together in the last 10 pages. I felt like Cate deserved more of an ending than what she got and I really wanted more of Catelyn and Dillon's lives. I wanted to see how their lives ended. I know that they get married but give me a piece of it. Then all the suspense for that ending, I just felt let down some.

Anyways this last half of the book was probably three stars, and that's really pushing it. I just really struggled at the end but I needed to know how it ended and I finished it and I was just so disappointed. I just wanted more of Cate and Dillon or even be more suspenseful because I don't feel like the book's suspense ended the way it could have. It just really felt rush in the end. Before this book, I always found half stars annoying because I didn't get the point of them. I would always either round up or down depending on the book but this book I figured out the need for a half star. I gave this book a 4-stars on GoodReads, it really wasn't horrible like the paragraph makes it sound, but in reality, I think it really is a 3.5-star book. I LOVED the first half of this book. It was amazing and I was hooked onto every single word of it. But the second half of the book was rough.

Book Aesthetic Explanation

Starting at the top row on the right (All pictures including the background came from Pinterest)

• Cows in Big Sur by the Ocean (Pg. 33) - The cows are what Cate first sees when she is running up to the house and it is mentioned a couple times how the cows have some of the best views on the ranch.
• Gambit and Jubilee (Pg. 117) - Both of these characters come from X-Men and they are the names of the dogs that Hugh gets for Dillon after the Coopers help Catelyn after she escapes from her captors. I knew I needed a picture of these two because I'm obsessed with X-Men and whenever a book has any X-Men characters I will include them in the book aesthetic. Plus this was the cutest picture ever!
• Statue of Liberty (Pg. 4) - The statue is the first thing immigrants to the United States used to see, she welcomed people to the states and this is what Liam Sullivan first sees when he arrived here from Ireland.
• A Border Collie (Pg. 117) - technically this should've been a border collie like a dog because Dillon's dogs were only half border collie and they had brown on them, but I just went ahead and added a border collie.
• Ireland (All throughout the book) - I had to add something that represented Ireland since it had so much significance in the book. First off Liam immigrated to the States from Ireland, he started the whole Sullivan legacy. Then Rosemary and Aidan took Cate back to Ireland after she was kidnapped to keep her away from the public's eye.
• Hollywoodland Sign (Pg. 5) - First we never think of Hollywoodland since the sign today only says Hollywood, but I knew as soon as I read about Liam seeing it as soon as he got to LA I needed to see if I could find that sign to add. It's an amazing start to the Sullivan legacy.
• Pile of Playbills (Move to NYC) - I needed something to represent Cate and Lilly's move to NYC since it played such a big role in Cate's life and Lilly moved because she was starring in a play so I thought a pile of playbill would be perfect for it.
• Cop Lights (UMM THE WHOLE BOOK) - This is a suspense book and there were so many times all throughout the book that the cops were involved but I mean the book starts off with a kidnapping so you know the cops are going to be involved.
• Two People and Dogs Walking on the Beach (Cate and Dillon's Walk) - Even though it is a suspenseful book there are was a lot of romance in it too. The house on Big Sur had its own beach and Dillon and Cate would walk on it with the dogs and this picture represents them so perfectly.
• Marvel Logo (Pg. 249) - I couldn't add pictures of all of the animal's that Dillon had or the character that they were named after so I thought it would be perfect to throw Marvel's logo out there since his two dogs after Gambit and Jubilee were named Natasha and Stark and there were other animals with Marvel names too.
• Prison Cells (Catelyn's Mom and Her Captures) - There were 3 characters in the book that went to prison and two of them never left their cells.
• 'Silence, Recording in Progress' Sign (Cate's Job) - Although acting is in Cate's blood she ends up doing voiceover work for a living and stops being in front of the camera. But she always used her acting skills, even to save her life in the end.
• Both the Pictures of the Horse and the Comet are because of Dillon's horse that he helped become born when he was a child, he named him Comet. 
• Surfboard (Red's Surfboard) - Red was the Sheriff when Cate was kidnapped and he was an avid surfer
• Big Sur is where Cate ends up living, where she was kidnapped, the Coopers' ranch is there, and the Sullivan's house is there
• Coca Cola Cap all throughout the book the characters are drinking Coke!
• Lilly, there needed to be a picture that represents Cate's family and her G-Lil was named Lilly, she was Hugh's second wife and very prominent in Cate's life.
• Dark Woods because Cate ran through the woods during the dark after she escaped from the house she was being held captive in.