Honestly there is not a lot to say here except that this is one of my favorite “In Death” books. There are a couple of scenes that I found too outrageous to be believed (the ending with Nixie), anyone allowing Dallas to take a kid to live with her and Roarke instead of having her in foster care, etc. But I found that there were some wonderful callbacks to earlier cases that Eve had worked.
“Survivor in Death” opens up on a loving and happy family being murdered in their beds. Nixie Swisher, who is 9, ends up being the lone survivor. Due to Dallas and company not knowing why the Swisher’s were attacked and if someone out there may be looking to finish the job with Nixie, Nixie is then moved in temporarily with Eve and Roarke.
We actually in this book get to see how would Eve be with a child of her own (honest, probably to a fault, still loving, but not outwardly so) and we get to see how much Roarke desires to one day have children (yep plural) with Dallas. And I can honestly see how easily a child could fit seamlessly in both of their lives. Heck, if you don’t think Roarke would not be a stay at home dad and or taking the kids to work with him, you have not read an “In Death” book before. I can also see Summerset happily babysitting whenever they needed him to.
We do get several moving scenes in this one (seriously have a box of tissues nearby) and I did cry a few times while reading. This book brings up a lot of memories for Roarke and Summerset (we all know that Summerset’s daughter was kidnapped, raped and murdered) and Summerset especially becomes more developed in this one. The scene when he is rocking Nixie to sleep and telling her about a garden…sigh. I can’t even type it since I am welling up. I do have to say that I wanted to snap at Dallas a few times though. She acted like a jerk to Summerset and I was annoyed by it.
We get appearances by Mavis and of course Peabody, McNab, etc. What I thought was cool though is that we get reappearances by Richard DeBlass, Elizabeth Barrister (both in Naked in Death, #1-the case that brought Eve and Roarke together), and their adopted son Kevin (Vengeance in Death, #6)
The writing is top notch in this one I think. Robb definitely manages to hit your heart strings. The flow worked too, up until the end I thought. As I said above, I thought the ending was a bit too much to be believed.
I keep wondering when they’re going to give Eve and Roarke a kid. And maybe that’s how she’s going to do it – give them an older child so that Eve doesn’t do the whole pregnancy/infant phase, because I’m not sure how that will mesh with what we already know about Eve. That would make a lot of sense.
And you kind of nailed the one thing I don’t like about Eve. I get that she’s supposed to have this love/hate thing for Summerset, but sometimes it’s more hate than love, and I don’t like that. Summerset’s a gem and I think the only thing he loves as much as Roarke is Eve, and it often feels like Eve slaps him in the face for that.
That would certainly work for me. Roarke has shown he is quite good with kids. And Eve is good with the older ones. She’s uncomfortable around babies, but is doing better around Bella. Honestly, I know that Nora Roberts has said how hard it would be for Eve and Roarke to have a baby together, but I pretty much laughed at that. She has had other series where the hero/heroine had kids, it didn’t spell the end of the series. I honestly think it could breathe new life into the series.
And yes the Summerset thing continues to bug! Summerset raised Roarke. He is pretty much his father except in name only. I hate it when she is thoughtlessly nasty to him or mean.
I have such a soft spot for this book. It was actually the first In Death book I read, I picked it up from my roommate’s bookshelf when I ran out of things to read. I always thought Nixie was such a neat name.
Me too! It’s one of my favorites for how everyone came in and rallied around this young girl. When she reappears in Thankless I was happy to see her again.