Shelter in Place
From Nora Roberts comes the #1 New York Times bestseller Shelter in Place (June 2018)—a powerful tale of heart, heroism...and propulsive suspense.
It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at the video-game store tended to customers. Then the shooters arrived.
The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever. In the years that followed, one would dedicate himself to a law enforcement career. Another would close herself off, trying to bury the memory of huddling in a ladies’ room, helplessly clutching her cell phone—until she finally found a way to pour the emotions of that night into her art.
But one person wasn’t satisfied with the shockingly high death toll at the DownEast Mall. And as the survivors slowly heal, find shelter, and rebuild, they will discover that another conspirator is lying in wait—and this time, there might be nowhere safe to hide.
From the author of Year One and Come Sundown, Shelter in Place blends propulsive suspense, a cast of vivid characters, and intimate psychological insight in a rich, exciting read.
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Community Reviews
For a few years (probably since it came out), this book kept coming up in book recommendation emails to me from various book recommendation websites. I always passed on it because of the subject matter. Reading about real life, random public shootings is already too prevalent. Even when I added it to my to-read list some time ago, last year, I still kept passing it up, asking myself “why do I want to read about another random public shooting by some !@#$%^& wackos with guns and their pursuit of notoriety”?
There are just some subject matters, I REALLY dislike and typically won’t read. It’s the same feeling I have about cult stories. I can’t stand seeing authors/writers glamorizing, normalizing and rationalizing !@#$%^& narcissistic wackos with a God complex. But that’s just me. Enough said.
I have mixed feelings about this book. Based on the summary, I was hoping for it to be more about surviving the aftermath and how the survivors move on. I was hoping it was going to be like Kelley Armstrong’s Aftermath, which was a good book/story. This book/story wasn’t really like that. Although I did like one of the characters aftermath story, which was basically the only thing that kept me reading the book. I wanted to know what happened to that character.
The story immediately started with the shooting by three teenage boys, who entered a crowded mall with automatic rifles and proceeded to kill nearly 100 people and injured dozens more. For 10yrs following the shooting, one of the shooter’s younger sisters (Patricia), who helped plan the shooting and who started to kill the survivors, starting with the ones that disparaged her brother and his friends or became gun control advocates. She planned to finish her killing spree with the cop who shot and killed her brother (Essie), the girl who first called 911 (Simone) and one of the hero survivors (Reed) that became a cop because of the shooting. These aren’t really spoilers since they all transpired in the first 30% of the book.
Somewhere around the 35% mark, Patricia ambushed Reed and shot him but, before going down, Reed got a shot off on her too. So, injured and on the run, Patricia laid low for a while. The story started flipping back and forth between Patricia spending the next few years continuing her killing spree of the survivors and the budding romance of Simone and Reed. Somewhere around the 55% mark, I seriously considered DNF’ing it. Instead, I just closed the book and start reading something else, something I knew I would enjoy from one of my fave authors/writers.
The second half of the book continued flipping back and forth between Patricia’s killings and Simone and Reed’s romance. Shortly thereafter, Reed rescued an abandoned and abused puppy, at which point, I couldn’t DNF the book now because now I’d need to know if anything happens to the puppy when Patricia comes after Reed. It was pretty much a given that Roberts would be sending Patricia after Reed again and, of course, Simone and Essie too. I liked the ending too; it was worth waiting for.
I really struggled through this book and it took me awhile to read it. So many parts of the story just seemed to kind drag on too long and I would find myself picking up another book to read. It was like the author was just trying to fill up space. I’m not sure I can intelligently convey my feelings about this story, so I’ll just say this. I liked the ending and a few of the MC’s were likeable enough characters and the story kept me interested enough to finish it and not DNF it before the halfway mark. For most of the book though, the story was a solid 2star rating and I would rate it a 2.5star, if I could, for a decent enough ending. However, I’m just not feeling compelled enough to round up.
There are just some subject matters, I REALLY dislike and typically won’t read. It’s the same feeling I have about cult stories. I can’t stand seeing authors/writers glamorizing, normalizing and rationalizing !@#$%^& narcissistic wackos with a God complex. But that’s just me. Enough said.
I have mixed feelings about this book. Based on the summary, I was hoping for it to be more about surviving the aftermath and how the survivors move on. I was hoping it was going to be like Kelley Armstrong’s Aftermath, which was a good book/story. This book/story wasn’t really like that. Although I did like one of the characters aftermath story, which was basically the only thing that kept me reading the book. I wanted to know what happened to that character.
The story immediately started with the shooting by three teenage boys, who entered a crowded mall with automatic rifles and proceeded to kill nearly 100 people and injured dozens more. For 10yrs following the shooting, one of the shooter’s younger sisters (Patricia), who helped plan the shooting and who started to kill the survivors, starting with the ones that disparaged her brother and his friends or became gun control advocates. She planned to finish her killing spree with the cop who shot and killed her brother (Essie), the girl who first called 911 (Simone) and one of the hero survivors (Reed) that became a cop because of the shooting. These aren’t really spoilers since they all transpired in the first 30% of the book.
Somewhere around the 35% mark, Patricia ambushed Reed and shot him but, before going down, Reed got a shot off on her too. So, injured and on the run, Patricia laid low for a while. The story started flipping back and forth between Patricia spending the next few years continuing her killing spree of the survivors and the budding romance of Simone and Reed. Somewhere around the 55% mark, I seriously considered DNF’ing it. Instead, I just closed the book and start reading something else, something I knew I would enjoy from one of my fave authors/writers.
The second half of the book continued flipping back and forth between Patricia’s killings and Simone and Reed’s romance. Shortly thereafter, Reed rescued an abandoned and abused puppy, at which point, I couldn’t DNF the book now because now I’d need to know if anything happens to the puppy when Patricia comes after Reed. It was pretty much a given that Roberts would be sending Patricia after Reed again and, of course, Simone and Essie too. I liked the ending too; it was worth waiting for.
I really struggled through this book and it took me awhile to read it. So many parts of the story just seemed to kind drag on too long and I would find myself picking up another book to read. It was like the author was just trying to fill up space. I’m not sure I can intelligently convey my feelings about this story, so I’ll just say this. I liked the ending and a few of the MC’s were likeable enough characters and the story kept me interested enough to finish it and not DNF it before the halfway mark. For most of the book though, the story was a solid 2star rating and I would rate it a 2.5star, if I could, for a decent enough ending. However, I’m just not feeling compelled enough to round up.
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