Another would close herself off, trying to bury the memory of huddling in a ladies' room, hopelessly clutching her cell phone-until she finally found a way to pour her emotions into her art. In the years that followed, one would dedicate himself to a law enforcement career.

But for those who lived through it, the effects would last forever. The chaos and carnage lasted only eight minutes before the killers were taken down. Mothers and children shopped together, and the manager at the video-game store tending to customers. A boy flirted with the girl selling sunglasses. Three teenage friends waited for the movie to start. It was a typical evening at a mall outside Portland, Maine. I love Nora Roberts’ books and characters.Sometimes, there is nowhere safe to hide. Roberts has the characters growing stronger and coming together to fight the evil that has tracked them for execution. This book is written covering many years. I absolutely loved CiCi, who was the best grandmother character ever. Even all of the secondary characters bring such life to this book. Simone runs from the memories at first, but through her art she begins to heal and then begins to memorialize the loved ones lost on that day in the mall. Essie is the mentor Reed needs at just the right time. Reed is such a strong hero who refuses to let evil win. I loved all of these characters! Reed and Simone had such differing ways of coping with their lives after the shooting. What becomes apparent though as time goes on is there is one person who is not finished with that day and is seeking revenge against all of those who survived. She is the first on the scene at the movie theater and is able to take down one of the shooters.įrom this point on, the story follows the intertwining lives of these three main survivors and how all of the survivors dealt with the trauma of that day and death of their family or friends throughout their lives. He picks up a bloodied little boy who appears to be alone and runs for cover.Įssie McVee is a police officer with her partner, dealing with a minor traffic accident in the mall parking lot when they receive the call of active shooters. On his way back from his break, he is confronted by people running the opposite way and pops of gun fire. Reed Quartermaine waits tables in an Italian restaurant in the DownEast Mall. She returns to a restroom stall and is the first to call 911 as she shelters in place.

When Simone starts to leave the restroom, she hears screams and gunshots. Simone Knox and her two best friends are in the movie theater. This book starts with a mass shooting perpetrated by three teenage males at a suburban mall. SHELTER IN PLACE by Nora Roberts had my emotions all over the place, but isn’t that what a good book does? Part psychological thriller, part romantic suspense and part coming of age for a group who survive one of the horrors of present day life, a mass shooter event.

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