Darlene's Book Nook: Book Review: Nowhere To Run by Nancy Bush

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Book Review: Nowhere To Run by Nancy Bush

SERIES: Nowhere, Book #1
AUTHOR: Nancy Bush

PUBLISHER: Kensington Publishing Corp.
PUBLICATION DATE: July 31, 2012

FORMAT: Mass Market Paperback, 384 pages
GENRE: Romantic Suspense

ISBN: 9781420125016

Some Secrets

When Liv Dugan ducks out of work for lunch, it’s just an ordinary day. When she returns, she stumbles onto a massacre. All her colleagues at Zuma Software have been shot. Only luck has left Liv unscathed, and that might be running out…

Will Follow You

Liv suspects the shootings are tied to her past—and to the package she recently received from her long-dead adoptive mother. Sensing she’s being followed, Liv jumps into a stranger’s car and orders him to drive. Her “hostage” complies, listening carefully as her story unwinds. Skeptical at first, he ultimately begins to believe all Liv’s fears are justified…

To Your Grave

Together, Liv and her unlikely confidant try to uncover the truth about her adoptive family, her birth parents, and her troubled childhood. Because somewhere in Liv’s past is a secret worth killing for, and a nightmare she can never outrun…

MY REVIEW:

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive any compensation for my review, and the views expressed herein are my own.

Bush brilliantly hooks the reader right at the beginning of the book with a suicide...or is it? The story then follows the daughter of the suicide victim, who was just a young child at the time of her mother’s death. The event traumatized Liv, then six years old, and her younger brother, Hague, who was only a year old at the time. Both children require psychiatric counselling, and Liv is shipped off to live at a group home when she is in her teens. Her brother is institutionalized in a state facility.

On her 25^th birthday, Liv receives a mysterious package that contains some photos, a personal letter from her mother, and her original birth certificate. Liv was aware that she was adopted, but she does not understand the importance of the photos and who the people are in them. While Liv has stepped out for lunch, an armed gunman walks into her place of employment and massacres her co-workers and boss. Liv returns from lunch to the bloody scene and calls 911 for help, but she leaves before they arrive because she is afraid that the madman is after her. She leaves her office and returns to her apartment to retrieve her gun. She decides to leave on foot to make it more difficult for her to be followed and make it easier to lose herself in the crowd. She goes to a café but then gets scared off by the customers talking about the breaking news of the massacre. As she exits the café, she impulsively lets herself into a vehicle that is standing at the curb and demands at gun-point that the owner drive her away. Liv’s instincts are right, and she has to stay one step ahead of the person who is after her or she will be his next victim!

I really enjoyed Nowhere to Run! The story moved along at a good pace, and the ending was a shocker that I didn’t see coming. I felt very sympathetic to Liv’s plight, as did the man who she kidnapped! The romance that developed between the two was quick and fiery, but a little too predictable. My only complaint with Liv is that I didn’t like her dependency on Auggie. I would have rather seen her as a stronger protagonist than a damsel in distress.

Bush is a new-to-me author, and she did hold my interest right until the end of the book. I am looking forward to reading the companion novel, Nowhere to Hide.

MY RATING:

4 stars!! It was really good! You should put it on your "To Be Read" list. A big thanks to Kensington Books for the opportunity to review this book!

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