by Sarah Bammel

Created on: February 05, 2011

In “Blue Smoke” Nora Roberts shows her brilliance bringing the intrigue of fire to life for the reader through her characters. There are several characters in the book as the story revolves around a young girl from a large Italian family, and her handful of boyfriends.

It can be difficult at times to keep the characters straight, but the development of each character is enough that you can kind of relate to them. Roberts gives the reader a little bit of background about each character, and in that large Italian family everyone gets married and it was hard remembering who was whose wife or husband. Keeping the wives and husbands straight though isn’t detrimental to the story if you can’t remember who married who, or whose kids are whose.

The timeline goes in a linear fashion so there is no jumping back and forth in the story. Roberts starts the book right where the trigger event is that starts everything. The main character is Reena, short for Catrina, and the reader is taken through events that happen when Reena is only 11 years old. Her family’s restaurant, Sirico’s, is set on fire after her father confronts the father of a boy who tried to rape her on the playground at school. It is the attempted rape and the fire at the store that are trigger events for two characters. One being Reena, and to find the other, you’ll have to read the book.

The book then follows along as Reena trains to be a fire investigator, working her way through college and fire fighter training. She wants to know everything about fire. Through her fire investigations she begins to feel that fire is following her. Her first boyfriend is killed in a fire, she can’t prove it, but in her gut she knows it was no accident. It’s not until the story comes to a climax and Reena is able to get a confession from the arsonist, who has been following her through her life, that she is able to prove the fire and death of her boyfriend was not an accident.

Roberts keeps things exciting, filling this romance novel with a little mystery. She also stays away from too much love making and shows the finer aspects of a blooming relationship through Reena, her boyfriends, and her family. “Blue Smoke” is a good read for anyone looking for a romance that isn’t all about the love making.

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