Its been so long since I've read a good romantic suspense and Identity was just the right book to get me hooked (again) to Nora's writing! Huge huge thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for an early copy to sink my teeth into. Just the right amount of mystery, romance and secondary character involvement without it being just too much like some authors do (character dump). I loved the family connections and closeness, while still secondary to the storyline, still felt the importance of their connection. Just a great book to get lost into!

Morgan Albright has a plan. After spending her childhood moving from military post to military post, she is committed to putting down roots, buying a home, and working two jobs to make her dream of someday owning her own bar a reality. Morgan’s plans are right on track when she meets Luke, a seemingly nice guy who wanders into the bar she works at - except Luke is not as he seems. Luke is really Gavin, a con artist (and heartless murderer) who breaks into Morgan’s home, stealing her identity and killing her roommate. As Gavin racks up incredible amounts of debt and destroys Morgan’s credit, she is forced to abandon her dream, sell her home, and move into her mother and grandmother’s home in Vermont. But as Morgan starts rebuilding the shambles of her life, Gavin knows he isn’t done with her.

Heading into this book, I thought of “romance” when thinking of Nora Roberts. However, this book blew that image out of the water. This story is tense, suspenseful, and terrifying in just the subject matter alone. Anyone can relate to the risk of identity theft, and many become victims every day. Roberts connects this genuine risk to a strong female protagonist who is instantly likable. The story moves quickly at first and Morgan quickly understands the self-discovery necessary to move on. However, despite the relatable subject matter and intensity of the story in the beginning, the storyline starts to drag at certain points in the second half. The Kindle edition of this book is roughly 450 pages which felt overwhelming, and I found many of the descriptions/details of gardens, inventions, architecture, etc. onerous. Fans of Stephen King’s descriptive writing might enjoy these bits, but I struggled not to skip over them completely. Additionally, there are many characters in Morgan’s new life, and keeping them straight along with the relationships they share with each other, etc. was very difficult. I could have used a family tree/flow chart to keep them all straight. Likewise, the small bits of romance included in the story felt almost forced, the characters seeming to go from “I don’t know you” to “I can’t live without you” overnight. I found myself wishing these ancillary characters/side plots didn’t exist because they took away from the main storyline without adding any strong benefit.

Overall, this book was an enjoyable read and a thought-provoking concept. I found myself wondering what I would do in the scenario of identity theft and doing so helped me connect with Morgan. The suspense/murder aspect kept me interested as I wanted to see what would happen between Gavin and Morgan. After finishing the book, I would feel confident recommending it to readers looking for a book with a little bit of everything: suspense and thriller aspects, light romance, humor, and heartwarming moments.

Nora Roberts usually writes a romantic suspense novel once a year. I always look forward to it because they are usually very good. This one is no exception, in fact it may be my favorite. Morgan is a young woman who has plans that are derailed when a serial killer steals her identity. She loses everything and has to start over, moving to Vermont to live with her grandmother and mother. The serial killer is still out there and is very angry that he didn’t get to kill her. This is the suspense part. There is also a great love story as well as the wonderful descriptions of food and drink, decor, beautiful setting, all the things that are part of a wonderful Nora Roberts book.

Huge fan of Nora Roberts and admire her writing. This story was very good and a page turner. Would highly recommend especially if a huge fan of romantic suspense like myself.

Nora Roberts can do no wrong in my eyes. She creates an entire world within her books! Highly recommend.

Wow, just wow! I would have read this in one sitting if I could have. Nobody does suspense romance like Nora Roberts. Her characters become the family you want to be in and their memory lasts long after the story ends. You will want to root for Jane and can't help but fall in love with Miles and his family as she does. Roberts creates realistic but strong women. I hope she is already writing Nell's story.

This book was absolutely amazing! You have the romance and the thriller rolled into an amazing story with spectacular characters. Morgan had so many dreams and goals for herself and they all can crumbling down in on day. The day she lost a true friend. A little after a year has passed and she is finally ready to move on and start over. She never dreamed of working in a place as fancy as the resort but it is absolutely amazing. Morgan loves her job and when she meets Miles at the bar she knows he is someone that will change her life forever. I was given an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

IDENTITY is the newest Romantic Suspense novel by prolific author Nora Roberts. Here, Morgan Albright has grown up without roots but finally settles outside of Baltimore in her own home, with a fun roommate and two jobs she thoroughly enjoys. She is full of hopes and dreams and saving up to finance them. She even meets a gorgeous guy and feels like life is going her way. That is until she comes home one day to find something tragic has happened to her roommate. Morgan’s life is torn apart, and soon she must move to live with family to protect herself and figure out what she will do next with her life.

This book kept me entertained the entire way through. The author has built a main character who expressed her good or bad feelings and made them feel real to the reader. While I tend to prefer the author’s work as JD Robb, I enjoyed this outing as well.

The Nora Roberts book Identity was a fast-paced, page turner that I couldn’t put down. I haven’t read too many Nora Roberts’ books, though I know she has tons, but this book gave me the desire to perhaps go through her catalog and find more titles. The book opens up with the protagonist, Morgan, part-time bartender extraordinaire by night and office manager for a construction company by day. She and her roommate Nina share a house, and she has big dreams of eventually owning a house as well as a bar. Then she meets Luke one night in the bar, a handsome and charming man just in town for a few months doing IT work for a company. Soon after that, Morgan’s world is turned upside down and she loses everything, her house, her job, and her identity. She flees Maryland to Vermont, to her family, finds a new job and a new love. Her life is looking up. However, the man she knew as Luke is actually a serial killer named Gavin, and he’s hellbent on killing Morgan because she’s the one that got away. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game with the FBI trying to capture him before he can finish the job.

All in all, the book was very good and very suspenseful. The reader is riding along with Morgan and is rooting for her. The characters are very likeable, especially Gram, who is a hoot. The Vermont resort, a family business, would be a dream job for anyone as they are described as treating their employees as family—definitely not like most businesses! Morgan’s storyline is very engaging. The other part of the book, the cat-and-mouse game between the FBI and Gavin, also rings true and the reader senses the frustration of the FBI who (naturally) always appear to be one step behind Gavin as he winds his way through the United States back to Vermont, to Morgan, whom he has become obsessed with finding and killing.

What I had problems with was the lack of attention deserved to Gavin’s storyline. His fast decline due to that obsession didn’t quite ring true for me (who admittedly has read too many true crime books on serial killers), and the final confrontation between Gavin and Morgan seemed rushed and was anti-climactic. What I would have preferred was being spared the chase and instead the focus be on Gavin trying to get psychologically close to Morgan and tormenting her closer to home than far away. I even had Bailey, one of the bartenders, pegged as a victim, but it never happened. But that was my only disappointment in an otherwise very good book. Those who love suspenseful books, with a bit or romance thrown in, will definitely enjoy this book. You don’t have to be a Nora Roberts fan to pick this one up. I highly recommend it.

B.
Bartender Morgan Allbright has her future all planned out, and she's been setting money aside to make sure she can fund every step of that plan, But when a couple of casual dates leads a murderer to her doorstep, that future was as dead as her best friend and roommate. The FBI tells her that the man who killed Nina was actually a serial predator, and that he had cleaned out her bank accounts and taken out massive loans in her name. Worse. He had planned to kill her, not Nina.

Soon she has no choice but to flee to her mother's home in Vermont. While she struggles to build something new, she meets another man, Miles Jameson, whose family business has deep roots in town. But the killer is still out there hunting new victims, and he hasn't forgotten the one who got away. Morgan will need to keep her mother and grandmother safe from the killer stalking her, and use his obsession with her to bring him down, once and for all. Nora Roberts once again portrays strong women fighting against long odds; her riders will love every minute. Recommended formal fans of romantic suspense. #NetGalley #Identity #SaltMarshAuthors

Morgan Albright was driven. She worked two jobs not because she was struggling to make ends meet. Morgan worked two jobs to build a nest egg for future renovations in her dream home. Morgan loved her work as both an office manager at a construction firm and bartender at the local watering hole. Those two jobs left little time for social life, but Morgan didn’t mind.

Morgan’s circumstances changed when she met Luke Hudson while bartending. Luke was smooth. A smooth talker, gentlemanly, and gorgeous. So after several weeks of casual bar conversations, Luke invited Morgan on a date. Morgan was giddy, flattered and felt to lucky to finally be with someone who was smart, handsome, and financially well off (based on the very generous tips she received from him.)

But Morgan would soon find out that you can’t trust anyone, anytime.

An unputdownable read, Identity was a page turning romantic suspense story. And I think that Identity was so much better than Roberts’ recent standalone, Legacy.

The characters are very well developed and it was easy to get caught up in all of the drama that unfolded. I especially loved the character of Morgan as she was determined, steadfast, and brave throughout the story. Secondary to Morgan was Luke. Even if he was the villain, his character scared the heck out of me. The rest of the cast filled in to shape the narrative.

The story unfolds from a third person’s point of view. And this method of storytelling works very well in this particular novel. Especially since there were different dynamics at play — family, romance, and murder. All of the elements were deftly combined into a surprising and thrilling suspense novel worthy of five stars.

I received a digital ARC from St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley. The review herein is completely my own and contains my honest thoughts and opinions.

I was gifted with an advanced copy of this book by Netgalley and I was thrilled.

Nora Roberts is on of my favorite authors and this latest installment doesn't disappoint!

Identity is an intense story that starts out like most of us can relate to, a person who works hard, has great friends and has big dreams. But unfortunately she become victim to identity theft and the murder of her best friend. Not only is she left with the guilt of losing her best friend, she is left to pick up the pieces of her life as it is so cruelly crumbling around her. I was so involved with the story line and I hated to put it down. If you're looking for romance or suspense this is the perfect blend of both.

Morgan Albright, is an office manager by day and still manages to tend bar at a local hangout at night.. She's bought a small home in Maryland and with her friend and room mate she is turning it into her dream home. One night while working at the bar she meets a personable stranger who seems harmless but is working her way into her confidence, so that he can gain entrance to her home to collect personal data. When he goes back to retrieve the software and data, Nina, the room mate happens to be home and is brutally killed. Nina.

Unable to hold on to her home and deal with her grief, Morgan returns to her Grandmother's home in Maine since she believes that she doesn't have any other options. But her story isn't over, Gavin the thief and murder can't let her be the one who got away and Morgan realizes that she has a lot to live for and she's ready to fight for it.

Suspense, Romance, family dynamics and characters you'll care about, it's a great summer read!

Identity is a book about finding one’s self after loss while still living in fear. The description is amazing, and though I’d never read a Nora Roberts book before, I was excited for this to be my first.

What I liked: the writing that made me feel like part of these families, many of the characters, the depth between the three generations of women, the thriller plot, the Jameson family, the empowerment, the freaking ending

What I didn’t like: the triller plot basically being a side plot, the over explaining and extra details that don’t add or a scene (like the many, many specific drinks, bartending details, or redundant information said to multiple people multiple times), the romance story going from 3 to 3000 with no real building it up

All in all, more than a hundred pages could have been taken out—much of it in the first 150 pages. However, the storyline was good. I’ll be giving Nora Roberts more chances in the future. Maybe I’ll check out her thrillers under her other name.

I received this ARC from the publisher and Netgalley for my honest review.

I loved this book! It reminded me of my favorite Nora Roberts book The Obsession. It’s a love story, a thriller, a wonderful tale of family reconnection and found family. Morgan survives one of the worst experiences of identity theft and a close friend’s murder. She literally loses everything and has to move back home with her mom and grandma. But despite it all Morgan is the person we all want to be. She’s so confident in her career & relationships that she made me, the reader, want to be her. Her confidence, her heart & resilience make her so likeable that you’re cheering her on all the way through. The book hangover was real after this one.

NR has a way of spinning a story that gives you just enough romance & mystery at a time that you have to keep reading; little bread crumbs all the way through make it hard to put down.

Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in advance.

Identity by Nora Roberts checks all the boxes for an excellent thriller. I wanted to make it last as long as possible, but it was too good o put down.

I loved this book so much! I really didn’t know what it was about when I started reading it, but I quickly was obsessed! The characters are well developed, and I couldn’t help but love them all!

This is a story about Morgan who lived in the Baltimore, Md. area. She worked for a family construction business during the day and a bar at night. She finally bought a house in the area and started fixing it up and then she decided to get a roommate, her friend Nina. Nina and Sam teased her about not dating and then she met someone who ended up stealing her identity and killing her friend who had messed up his plan to kill Maggie. Maggie ends up moving back to Maine with her Mom and Grandma and starting her life over. She ended up with a dream job and meeting someone as well as enjoying living with family and helping them as much as she could. With Feds following Roz and keeping her informed until they could finally catch him and if they do. This is a very good book. A page turner. It was hard to put down. . A MUST READ.

𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲 - 𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐚 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳? 𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘺, 𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦? 𝘐 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘦 𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘳 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🕵🏻‍♀️💻💳

Morgan falls for Luke, a cold-blooded con artist, and within weeks he has hacked into her accounts and murders her best friend and roommate. He intended to murder Morgan and has stolen parts of her identity, but his sick and twisted mind cannot get over that Morgan was the one that got away. She moves in with her mom and grandmother in a quaint town in Vermont and begins to rebuild her life, meeting the brooding and handsome Miles whose family runs the hotel Morgan works for. All the while, Luke, or Gavin as his real name, has not forgotten about Morgan and his plans for her.

This novel was actually the first Nora Roberts book I’ve read and I really enjoyed it. Morgan is a strong and relatable female lead character and her resilience in the face of tragedy is a force to be reckoned with. A New England native myself, I really enjoy when quaint towns like that in Vermont make their way into stories like this. I also fall for Miles right alongside Morgan, and especially his dog Howl 🥰.

The only criticism I have was that it felt like the story slowed down tremendously once Morgan made her way back to Vermont. Part of this feels planned as a way to demonstrate how scrupulously she puts her life back together while Gavin is out there lurking and planning his next move. I fell in love with the way she ingrains herself in Miles’ family while working as a bartender for in the hotel they own as a family business. Overall I’d recommend this book once it comes out May 23, 2023! 🤗

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, and Nora Roberts for my advanced review copy! 💖

Identity by Nora Roberts is both a love story and a terrifying suspense novel. Morgan has moved many times in her life and has finally set down roots in an ideal location. She owns her home that she shares with her friend Nina. Everything that is perfect in her life comes to an end when she meets an attractive and very charming man.
As the story develops you come to love Morgan, who is such a strong woman in the face of tragedy and life changing events. You will also enjoy the other characters in the book that she comes to trust and love.
I loved this page turner and could not put it down until I reached the very end. Thank you to St Martin's Press and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book.

I’ve only previously read six books by Nora Roberts and for the most part I’ve enjoyed them (especially BLACK HILLS which I highly recommend). But this one...just wasn’t at all what I expected I guess. I didn’t love it, didn’t hate it, but it was a bit of a slog to get through. I mean, when work is really busy it can take me longer to read a book, but this one took a month. Literally a month minus one day. Part of it was the writing style, which I do not remember from her previous books.

“When she went over to join him, sat, she let out a sigh.”

“Smiling, Olivia reached down, gripped Morgan’s chin, gave it a gentle wiggle.”

Those are just two small examples of the myriad sentences in the book with multiple commas and an absence of such words as “and” or “then”. I found it a bit jarring. And while I read an uncorrected digital galley of the book, meaning those quoted lines could of course be changed in the final copy, there are so many instances of the issue I’m complaining about that I’m confident they are not typos that will be edited or fixed but rather an artistic choice by the author.

I expected a romantic suspense story. There was very little suspense until the very end, and while there is a romance it wasn’t particularly romantic, other than the occasional passage here and there. I did quite like the hero, Miles, but as appealing as he was he didn’t seem fleshed out as much as the heroine. Which, of course it’s really her story, so that could have also been a choice the author made.

Overall, I enjoyed some parts much more than others, and I did love the relationship between the heroine and Howl, the hero’s dog. But I probably could have misplaced the book (or lost it from my Kindle app) at any point in the story and not been invested enough to really care if I never finished it. Regardless, I will continue to read Ms. Roberts’ books since I have very much enjoyed some of her in the past.