Very interesting premise makes for suspensful reading. After police officer Sloan Cooper is badly wounded on the job her recovery takes her home to heal. Her family keeps her motivated, although a bit annoying to read about, while she works to solve a crime that has gotten her interest.

The story is interesting and keeps moving. The criminals and descriptions of their actions are jarring set against the rest of the story and I had to skim over some of their parts of the story. Overall the main characters made this a good read even if the 2 parts of the story didn't reall gel together.

This story was very suspenseful. It was difficult to figure out where Clara and Sam was fitting into the story,, but as I kept reading it started to make sense. This story had some tragedies, murders, hardships, friendships, family and love.
Overall, a good story. I found this one different than a lot of Roberts other books.

Hidden Nature is a true classic Nora. The suspense is perfectly built, giving you a secret window into the mind of cult-y serial killers with a mission. Sloan is a classic, no bs heroine with a spine of steel & Nash is a abuse survivor who is finally releasing the threads on his past. Their romance is not as prominent in this story but you can see the slow build from familiar to in love. The crime portion of this book was the true focus of this book. Nora really outdid herself with the crazy on the killer front. I deducted a star because the pacing was a little off, & I was hoping for a bit more emotion and more vibrance from the characters.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for providing this ARC. I only started reading Nora Roberts a few years ago, and mainly 2 specific series, but I know she is quite prolific, so I thought I would check this new series out. I found it enjoyable but maybe not as engaging as the other series. For me, the thriller part seemed kind of “stuffed in” to the main story of a police officer re-starting her life after a shooting. It felt like the story couldn’t decide if it was a serial killer story or a romance. I think Nora Roberts’ main fans will enjoy it nonetheless.

HIDDEN NATURE by Nora Roberts is an intriguing mash-up of mystery, crime thriller, investigation, and romance with a bit of HGTV like home renovation going on throughout. The setting of this story is the beautiful Maryland mountains with a main character who is not only a member of the Natural Resources Police but is a genuine lover of nature and all its varied seasons. This is a standalone novel.

Sloan Cooper grew up knowing exactly what she wanted to do with her life. While her family runs a successful year-round vacation resort in the Heron’s Rest, she has her heart set on a career with the Natural Resources Police of Maryland. After closing a successful case, she and her partner stop at a small-town convenience store. Sloan walks into a robbery in progress and is shot in the chest.

After being shocked back to life, she has a long recuperation ahead. She returns to her childhood home, but even though she cannot return to work, she is bored. When she hears about the case of a missing woman which intrigues her. She decides to do a bit of online searching on her own and soon discovers there are more missing people in the tri-state area of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia that appear to have no connections other than their disappearances.

As the investigation continues with several jurisdictions on the case, Sloan realizes what the connection is between all the missing, but it is so bazaar, others find it hard to believe, but Sloan knows she is right. When a local friend goes missing, she is determined to find him and bring him home and stop the killer or killers because she may be on their list, too.

This is another great all-around, intriguing and satisfying book by Ms. Roberts. I opened this book and could not stop. Sloan is a strong, intelligent protagonist who is put through difficult physical and mental trials and doggedly continues forward. Her family and friends are all fully developed characters that are a strong support system and interesting in their own rights. The HGTV home renovations add a unique twist to the dialogue and focus when they are not discussing or chasing down the missing. I also loved the beautifully integrated descriptions of nature and wildlife in the area. The crime thriller plotline is woven throughout the book at an ever-increasing pace. The perpetrators are seriously scary and depraved and made the hair on my arms stand-up.

I highly recommend this amazing mash-up! Ms. Roberts is one of my all-time favorite authors and I always look forward to her books.

Thank you for the advanced review copy of Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts. As a longtime fan of Nora Roberts’ novels, I was really looking forward to reading this one. She has a real talent for creating characters that feel authentic and emotionally resonant, and that strength definitely came through here. I found myself connecting with the characters and enjoying the dynamics between them.

However, I did feel that the pacing in this book was a bit choppier than what I’ve come to expect from her. Some of the transitions felt a little abrupt, and at times the story didn’t flow as smoothly as her previous works. That said, the plot still managed to hold my attention. I was curious to see where the story would go, and I was engaged enough to keep turning the pages right up until the end.

While Hidden Nature may not be my favorite of her books, it was still an enjoyable read that entertained me and offered moments of charm and intrigue. I’m always eager to see what Nora Roberts comes up with next.

Nora Roberts does it again! How does she keep coming up with this stuff? As usual her characters are amazing, and very well developed, with a whole cast of side characters who you get just as invested in as the main characters. While this one started out slow, it still kept me reading because of the gradual buildup. While I found the ending a little anticlimactic, it was actually perfect for the character and this book, anything else would have been OTT drama that wouldn't have fit the FMC at all, and the epilogue was just pure gold.

I love Nora Roberts. It’s been awhile since I picked up one of her books but it doesn’t disappoint. I found this one a bit slow going and it didn’t feel like a typical Nora book. I think it was the serial killer aspect. Reminded me a bit more of her JD Robb books. But it was still good. I enjoyed getting to know all of the characters. In true Nora fashion you get to know each character and a lot of small details. If your live Nora Robert’s and JD Robb you will enjoy this book.

Nora has a way of writing that hooks you in early and keeps you dangling, and this was no different, except that I was honestly beginning to doubt where we were going. Setting the foundation for Sloan and Nash was great, the Coopers are a Nora signature family, as is Theo, and the extended cast of Joel and Sari, Cap and Elena, all hit the right notes. But giving Drea and Theo the big lightening strike moment, the whirlwind love story, left me wantin, add in all the page space for Sam and Clara's day-to-day beyond being psychotic killers, and I was flagging. By the time Sloan and Nash have their moments together, I was ambivalent to them becoming a couple. And yet, I couldn't put it down. I had to see Sloan put the pieces together to solve her mystery. I just wish there was more mystery for the reader instead of having it all revealed to us at the start, and more Romance (odd to say in a book that had multiple couple story lines). Thank you for the chance to read this early.

Sloan Cooper unknowingly walks into a convenience store with an armed robbery in progress. She surprises the jittery thief, and he promptly flees the premises . . . but not before he hastily fires a gunshot that alters Sloan's life.

Seconds after passing away on the operating table, she benefits from the feats of modern medicine and is shocked back to existence. Sloan, resigned to a prolonged work absence, decides to live with her parents for the recommended recovery period. While re-evaluating the trajectory of her life and career, she is put on the scent of a new local case involving the bizarre abductions of seemingly random victims.

I adore this fun combination of great character development and exciting crime investigation. I highly recommend this upcoming novel for fans of Nora’s work, crime fiction, murder mysteries, or domestic thrillers.

I thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of Hidden Nature for my unbiased evaluation.  5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley & St. Martin's Press for the
E-ARC! Really enjoyed! Dark & twisty and very
well-done characters. Another great book by this author.

I have only read a few books by Nora Roberts. I am by no means an expert, but it amazes me the caliber of writing that Roberts puts out hundreds of books since 1981, and they are all very popular and seemingly well written. The four I've read have all been top notch.

This particular book is a romantic suspense, heavy on the suspense. However, even with the romances and the murdering going on, there are other subplots. This book starts out with Sloan walking into a mini-mart and being shot and nearly killed. The first portion of the book is Sloan having to move in with her parents while she heals and recovers. A recovery, both physical and mental. During this recovery, we learn about Sloan, her family, and the town that she lives in. Sloan has to learn to accept the things she can not control and to rely on others, which she doesn't like to do. We have another POV from Nash, who was an investment banker who moved to town with his lawyer brother to start a handyman business. He and his brother come from wealth and privilege but want to get out from under the family and make their own way in the world. He meets Sloan and helps her refurbish her house, and they become fast friends with Sloan. Our final POV is the bad guy. Who would be sweet and nice if she weren't insane. As Sloan discovers a bunch of missing person's she takes it on herself to solve the crimes, and that's our story!

I enjoyed the ride that we had here, even the bad guys had interesting stories. I think that a lot of bad guys think in this same vein and do not see themselves as bad people necessarily. The romance is slowish and builds from friendship and attraction to more in a wholesome way. Sloan's struggles in healing were nice to read, though I'm sure people who are really shot go through much more, it is still nice to see the addition of the mental health aspects of a trauma instead of just physical. The story is engaging, I didn't want to stop reading, I wanted to know what would happen next. The characters, even the minor ones, were all flushed out and felt important. The setting and imagery were described beautifully and make you want to visit, minus the murderers. Overall, it's a Nora Roberts book, more police procedural with a bit of romance and murder thrown in.

Nora Roberts offers a master class in romantic suspense with Hidden Nature. Great characters and an original plot had me on the edge of my seat. I loved Sloan’s tight knit family. Hidden Nature delivers characters you can root for, swoon over, and a few you hope to never meet. As usual the setting soaks you in slowly and before you know it you’ve been swept up into the suspense that holds you captive until the very end.

I want to preface by saying, I've read pretty much all of Nora Roberts books so I may be biased.

That being said, I enjoyed this latest addition to her booklist! The mystery surrounding the villians wasn't as complicated or deep but I enjoyed the main characters a lot which made up for it in my opinion.

One of Nora Roberts' greatest strengths is her ability to create realistic and endearing characters who have realistic connections with each other whether it's friends, family, or romantic partners. While I do think the mystery element was a little weak here the characters more than made up for it in my opinion.

From the very first sentence, this story pulls you in and doesn’t let go. Nora Roberts weaves a story that’s equal parts mystery and romance, with just the right blend of suspense, heart, and emotional depth. The plot moves at a fast clip, keeping you hooked with every twist and turn, while never sacrificing the emotional beats that make the characters come alive.

The characters are wonderfully developed—flawed, relatable, and utterly engaging. Their relationships feel genuine, and their personal struggles add richness to the overarching mystery. The storytelling shines, as it balances tension and tenderness with ease.

If you're looking for a gripping story with strong characters and a plot that keeps you guessing, Hidden Nature absolutely delivers. Highly recommended!

Let me preface this by saying I am a HUGE Nora Roberts Fan, I have read so many of her books and many under her other pen name J.D. Robb. I wanted sooooo much to love this novel, it had a lot of promise, romance, thriller, family, but for me it just felt forced. One thing Roberts always does well is develop her characters and I adored our FMC and MMC, I wanted to read so much more about them and especially their romance, but there was a lot of descriptions about their houses and the reno work they were doing. The protagonists were just annoying and overdone. I think the premise of this novel was a good one, and could have been executed better with a more sinister 'thriller' plotline, and a deeper 'romance' plotline. I still think this would be a good, easy, vacation read, which I'm sure long standing Roberts fans will adore. I would happily read another book about Sloan and Nash (reminds me of her 'in death' series).. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

It’s no secret that Nora Roberts is one of my favorite authors of all time. She’s my comfort read of choice. So I was understandably thrilled to find an early audio copy of her newest title, Hidden Nature, waiting for me in my inbox. And the fact that this took place on a day when I was down with a migraine felt like a gift. As I expected it to, the combination of Nora’s easy, lyrical writing, her compelling characters, wonderful sense of family, deep dives into interesting profession, and signature plot tension—all delivered via the dulcet tones of January LaVoy’s narration—carried me away from the headache. There were a few things about this particular novel that kept me from loving it quite as much as a lot of Nora’s other work, but it was still a wonderful narrative respite.

First, the things that worked for me. This list has to start with Nora’s phenomenal storytelling. I love Nora’s writing and voice just as much as I always have. I was immediately entranced. Her style is this phenomenal blend of easy and lyrical, and nothing else pulls me in as quickly or as deeply.

I also really loved this cast of characters. Sloan, our main perspective character, is a natural resource officer who fights her way back from the brink of death with incredible tenacity. She has this beautifully tight, happy, healthy family unit that supports her through it. And then there’s Nash, our male lead. He’s left everything he’s ever known, and the high-powered life he was groomed for, to move to the mountains of Heron’s Rest, Maryland, and start a handyman business. His family life was the opposite of Sloan’s but with an exception. He's incredibly tight with his brother, Theo, who is delightfully exuberant. I loved the family and found-family dynamics in this story; it’s one of the elements Nora always does best. She also does a fantastic job portraying construction and renovation. As her husband is a carpenter, this makes all kinds of sense, and I always enjoy when this is an element in one of her stories.

Sloan and Nash don’t even meet until over a third of the way into the book, and I like that we’re given such solid narrative foundations for both characters before they ever appear together on the page. This makes them stronger both individually and as a unit. I also really enjoyed the fact that some threads of this story remind me of the In Death books. The weirdness of the case. Sloan brainstorming over it with Nash as her sounding board. Her dreams. All of these elements brought Eve and Roarke to mind.

But, as much as I love that correlation, it’s also where some of my issues with the story started. First of all, I found Clara and Sam, our villains, to be deeply disturbed and disturbing. Which is, of course, the point. But their weird, cultish motivations mixed with their loving, well-adjusted couple’s routine made me really uncomfortable, especially as their beliefs were something of a bastardized version of Christianity. The fact that they’re totally in love and almost cute with it made the fact that they were so completely off their rockers more unsettling, as did the religious nature of their crimes. Clara struck me as a vampiristic Stepford wife, and that added element of blood consumption was all kinds of icky. But again, these elements worked for the story. They just grossed and weirded me out, which is totally subjective.

What’s a bit more objective is my critique of how the case was handled. The way Sloan comes to conclusions about the murders, about the who and the why, feels like a stretch. It’s all a bit too on the nose and convenient. That also goes for how everything comes together in the story’s climax. It all seemed kind of easy and tidy.

Also, I can tell that I've been mostly reading clean and Christian fiction, because the language felt a bit harsh. There was more profanity/strong language than I remembered there being in Nora’s work. But that’s another subjective issue. My ability and desire to stomach strong adult content, be it in language, sexuality, or gore, has just diminished with age.

Any day that brings a new Nora Roberts book into my life is a good day. And when that happens to align with me being sick or having a migraine, it makes a bad day so much better. Hidden Nature made a bad day better. I’m not sure it’s one that I’ll be revisiting as often as I have some of her other books, but I still mostly enjoyed my time with it.

*Spoiler-free*
This author creates great romantic suspense thrillers that balance crime, family dynamics and a romance sub-plot. In this romantic suspense story, the main character Sloan, a police officer, gets severely injured at the start of the novel and must recover and start fresh. As she is learning to adapt to her injury and rehabilitation, serial abductions are occurring. Sloan cannot leave her detective mind behind and starts to investigate the missing person’s cases that seem odd and connected in some way.
I read a lot from this author and love her work but for some reason, this story started out too slowly for me, and I couldn’t get invested. Before I get to “know” or care about the main character, she gets injured and is “recovering” for the first third of the book. Later the dynamics of her new life setting, family relationships and a set of brothers who moved in nearby, helped pull my interest a bit more. The suspense plot is introduced early on with plenty of POVs from the “villain.” Unfortunately, these POVs did not interest me and took away the “whodunit” mystery that usually makes books thrilling or suspenseful.
I enjoyed the ending because it was unique and unexpected in the way things played out. The FMC and MMC relationship had good pacing, and I enjoyed them the most. The characters had good rapport, however in some cases they were too similar and had some of the same speech patterns and personality.
Overall, in my opinion, this was not my favorite by this author but I still enjoyed it once I got to know the character and was interested in what happens to her.

I always enjoy reading Nora Robert’s books. I liked the book and all of the characters. Nash is my favorite character and I wish there was a little bit more romance between him and Sloan. It was a little slow in spots but I thought it was a great book and I recommend reading it.

I absolutely love Nora Roberts books and when I find myself in a reading slump, her writing pulls me right back out. This book was a little slow to start but picks up really quickly and never stops. This book has it all serial killers, wrong place wrong time trope, love, home renovations and a mystery all in one. I will be buying a copy when the book is published and why not, the story is great and the cover is beautiful. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.