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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Mar 2000, 438 pages
Paperback:
Apr 2001, 480 pages
Doyenne of the bestseller lists, Roberts may have achieved her personal best in this tense Southern gothic. This is romantic drama at its best.
In Carolina Moon, beloved author Nora Roberts spins her finest, most evocative tale yet, in a novel rich with the secrets and romance of the South. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly notes, "Doyenne of the bestseller lists, Roberts may have achieved her personal best in this tense Southern gothic. This is romantic drama at its best."
Tory Bodeen grew up in a small, rundown house where her father ruled with an iron fist and a leather belt--and where her dreams and talents had no room to flourish. But she had Hope--who lived in the big house, just a short skip away, and whose friendship allowed Tory to be something she wasn't allowed to be at home: a child.
After young Hope's brutal murder, unsolved to this day, Tory's life began to fall apart. And now, as she returns to the tiny town of Progress, South Carolina, with plans to settle in and open a stylish home-design shop, she is determined to find a measure of peace and free herself from the haunting visions of that terrible night. As she forges a new bond with Cade Lavelle--Hope's older brother and the heir to the Lavelle fortune--she isn't sure whether the tragic loss they share will unite them or drive them apart. But she is willing to open her heart, just a little, and try. But living so close to those unhappy memories will be more difficult and frightening than she ever expected. Because the killer of Hope is nearby as well.
Tory
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still.
-William Shakespeare
Chapter One
She woke in the body of a dead friend. She was eight, tall for her age, fragile of bone, delicate of feature. Her hair was the color of corn silk, and slid prettily down her narrow back. Her mother loved to brush it every night, one hundred strokes with the soft-bristled, silver-backed brush that sat on the graceful cherrywood vanity.
The child's body remembered this, felt this, each long, sustained beat with the brush and how it made her imagine herself a cat being petted. How the light slanted over the pin boxes and the bottles of crystal and cobalt, and struck the silver back of the brush as it flashed over her hair.
She remembered the scent of the room, smelled it even now. Gardenia. Always gardenia for Mama.
And in the mirror, by lamplight, she could see the pale oval of her face, so young, so pretty, ...
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