I still remember the first book that I ever read by Nora Roberts. It was Carolina Moon and I remember how I fell into the world she created in that story. I was young, single, hard working mom of two small kids under the age of 5 and a coworker said, if you like to read you should read something by Nora Roberts. I did like to read, but who has time with small children? So I went to our public library and decided to take a gander and finding myself checking out with Carolina Moon. It has been a major love of reading since.

Then could you only imagine to get approved to read her new book coming out May 21st? Plus to top it off, the book is based in Kentucky! I was over the moon and back again. Now, the book is based in the hills of Eastern Kentucky and I'm from Western Kentucky, but a lot of her characters had personalities and sayings that I know very closely! Don't forget about the scenery! Eastern Kentucky is beautiful!

Nora Roberts knows how to write a suspenseful story and throws a little romance building into it while sprinkling in a little fantasy element. Mind Games is just that-a mind game. It's a book I read within 2 days!

Thank you @norarobertsauthor , @stmartinspress , and @netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy!

This is the first Nora Roberts novel I've ever read, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I enjoyed the main characters, the Appalachian community feel, the farm life, and the hunky rock star love interest. However, I also feel like this book went on and on and on....there were several conversations, or descriptions of activities that honestly generated some unintentional eye rolling. I do enjoy longer more descriptive stories, as they help you feel more emotionally invested, but at times this one felt like a huge run-on sentence.

MIND GAMES is another excellent standalone thriller by Nora Roberts. It has it all: great family, great friends, a wonderful new romance and a killer who can find his way into the main characters mind.

Thea Fox and her brother Rem really enjoy spending two weeks with their Grammie in Redbud Hollow. They can feed the chickens, milk the cow, and just enjoy spending time with their Grammie. Their parents enjoy the time to just be a couple while the kids are gone too. But a jealous killer has the couple in his sights.

Thea and her grandmother both wake up during the night because they have seen the killer enter the house and kill the couple. Unfortunately, the killer who has the same sort of psychic gift as Thea has seen her too. Thea's gift allows her to offer police detectives the information they need to track the killer Ray Riggs too.

Ray Riggs will be spending the rest of his life in prison but that doesn't mean that he won't keep barging in on Thea's life. She needs to learn to block him out and live her life. She grows, makes friends, becomes a game designer, and falls in love with the rock star she had a crush on when she was a teen. But Ray Riggs is always there in the background trying to spoil her life.

Excellent story. I especially loved the strong family ties and the way they all choose to make their best lives after an unspeakable tragedy.

Nora Roberts has a gift for writing strong, loving, families and friendships. In this novel, a woman and her granddaughter share the gift of second sight.

Thea’s gift helps the police catch and convict her parents’ murderer. But it also formed a mind-bond with that killer, and eventually Thea must learn to sever that bond if she wants to live in peace.

Recommended. #MindGames #NetGalley #SaltMarshAuthorSeries

Thea Fox is twelve years old and as they do each summer, the family has driven to her maternal grandmother’s house in Virginia. Thea loves it here. She can be free, running to her heart's content.

But her joy soon turns to grief. Thea and her grandmother have a gift. Although it feels more like a curse now. They can both see what happens to her parents and even though her gift helps put away the person responsible, it comes with an awful connection to a killer.

What a twisty and fresh story this is!

NetGalley/ St. Martin’s Press May 21, 2024

this is a story about Thea and her brother, they travel to spend summers with their grandparents every summer. this summer their parents ae murdered by a seral killer. i enjoyed the story but it might not be for everyone.

This was a very interesting book. Nora has done it again, she has you hang on the edge. It was very sad to start off with the murder of the parents and Thea watching it through her dream.

There's a reason this gifted storyteller is on bookshelves in 90% of homes, and this story is a perfect example as to why. With hints of her JD Robb writing style, this saga is an immersive experience and will have you living and breathing in the lives of these characters.

Thea and Ren look forward to their visit to Grammie Lucy's each summer in Redbud Hollow, KY. But their two weeks take a turn when Thea and Grammie Lucy wake up one night after sharing an awful dream that proves true. Thanks to her psychic abilities, Thea helps put the man who dispatched her parents behind bars for life. Unfortunately, her parents' assailant has the same ability and follows Thea as she carries on with her life.

This was a quick read for me, finishing it in one evening because I couldn’t put it down. In the midst of the grief and sorrow are a thrilling, suspenseful read surrounded by home and heart. No matter your preferred genre, this one is sure to please every reader.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the chance to read an ARC of Mind game by Nora Roberts. Mind games is a stand alone title, and while it wasn't her usual romantic-suspense, I found myself enthralled in the story of Thea, a twelve year old who sees her parents murdered in her mind. I love stories that have a paranormal theme and strong female main characters and this one had both. We see Thea grow up and become a strong woman and a fantastic video game designer. If you love RPGs, you may want to pick this one up to read as they play an important part in the story.

Wow, what a story from the amazing Nora Roberts. I have to admit, as much as I enjoyed this book, I considered subtracting a point because it starts with a double murder, and a child traumatized by “seeing” the loss of her parents. However, the story is so beautifully written, the scenery of Appalachian Kentucky so lovingly described, and the characters so well written, I just had to go for the full rating.

What did I love? The setting as mentioned, and the characters, of course. The cadence of Grammie’s way of speaking is gentle and soothing, and I especially appreciated her being a country wise woman with modern ways. I loved that the characters had modern day (and timely) careers. I loved that the homes imaged in the story were so well done, they were almost like secondary characters in the story..

Though I haven’t read all of Nora Roberts’ books, I don’t believe she’s written any others quite like this.

I like Nora Robert’s writing but I found this disturbing. In a world riddled with violence, specifically gun violence, this is not something I choose to read.

Thea and her brother Rem spend two weeks every summer in Appalachia with their grandmother Lucy, something they look forward to every year. But this year, Thea and her grandmother awaken with the terrible knowledge that Thea’s parents have been murdered. Only Thea experiences her parent’s murder through the eyes and thoughts of the murderer. This ability has been passed down through the women in Lucy’s family, but the sight is very strong in Thea.

Thea’s ability results in the capture and imprisonment of the killer, but it turns out the killer also has some psychic abilities and soon he is in Thea’s mind and she struggles to block him. It also brings her to the attention of two detectives who question how she knows so much about her parent’s murder; they are suspicious and believe Thea or her grandmother planned the murders. Thea quickly tells them things she should not know, and they realize she has these special abilities.

I have never cried so much as I did for the first part of this novel, it was just so painful with Thea having to relive her parent’s murder and other things the murderer has done and wants to do. She spends 15 years battling mentally with him, as they play mind games. I liked Lucy’s lifestyle, with the livestock, gardening, and using ingredients from her farm to make soaps and candles. Thea and Rem grow up with chores and a strong work ethic. They also watch their grandmother help people in need with her herbal remedies and with her gift of sight. By the end of the book everything fell into place with a HEA for Thea.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC of Mind Games; this is my honest review.

I am not sure how Ms. Roberts continues to come up with different ways to entertain us, but she does. This story is not so much a mystery. It is more a tale of good triumphing over evil and in such an interesting way. Thea Fox and her brother Rem visit their maternal grandmother every summer in the hills of Kentucky, the highlight of their summer. The year Thea is 12 and her brother ten, their parents are murdered while they are with Grammie, they are physically ok, fortunately or unfortunately, Thea has inherited the gift of sight passed from generation to generation of women in her family. She saw her parents murder as if she were there, and it is her description and insights that lead to the arrest of their killer. There is only one problem. He has the same gift of insight and knows who is responsible for his imprisonment. He knows how to connect with her, he knows how to cause her problems, and he's determined to play Mind Games. This is definitely a game of good and evil you will want to follow! Thanks to #NetGalley and #StMartinsPress for the opportunity to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Mind Games, a three-part saga that did not quite deliver for me.

2.5 stars for this one but have rounded up to 3. I have read some great books by Nora, however, this one I really struggled to get through.

Let me start with the good. There are some beautiful messages in the story, like the difference between being wealthy and but being truly rich, can come from being surrounded with strong friendships and love and sense of community. To be your authentic self, follow your dreams to find true happiness, even if it goes against what those in your life think you should be, or act.

The story is again split into three parts as we have come to expect from the Nora Roberts novels. Our leading lady has a gift, the ability to read people, to see things. If you are not into stories that touch on that type of genre, then this would not be for you.

The style of writing in terms of the way the characters speak or have their thoughts is very much what you would find in the later books of the JD Robb, In Death Series and while I have read all of those books, that style I associate with those characters and was not sure if really fit with these characters, their location, feel of the story.

The main drawback for me was that I feel the story meandered and was drawn out. While I loved the characters, it is difficult to cover such a long period of time (16yrs) easily, and there were sections of story followed by quick summations of a week, a season or to whip you through several years. There were sections where it delved into the main characters work which rather than draw me in, had me wondering how it would be relevant, is it adding anything to the story. It was also repetitive in places, in particular, the final showdown/ending, rather than being engaged and on the edge of my seat wondering how it would all go I was skimming thinking, know all this, a little anticlimactic for me.

As this was an uncorrected advanced reader copy, there were a few errors in it that I am sure would have been picked up and corrected.

I haven’t read a Nora Roberts book in years so I was happy to dip back in. This book is about Thea, a woman who has the gift of psychic powers. When she is 12, her parents are brutally murdered by a spree killer, Riggs. Riggs also happens to have the gift of psychic powers and the two are connected throughout his many years of incarceration. Riggs torments Thea throughout her life, has she built a successful career as a video game designer. Thea finally had enough, creates a final solution to end her years of anguish from Riggs. Love story also interspersed.

For me, this book was just too slow. There’s a lot of action in the beginning and some at the end, but the rest of the book is just day-to-day activities. I wish it was a little more suspenseful.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Nora Roberts for the ARC.

I am a huge fan of Nora Roberts (and her alter ego J.D. Robb) but this book was mostly a miss for me. The premise is interesting - a psychic serial killer and a psychic child sharing a connection into each other's minds that continues as the child grows. But the execution fell a bit short. The story dragged at times, and the romance felt almost superfluous. I never felt super connected to adult Thea, and I never felt like the villain was a serious threat once he was in super max. I also felt like the video game in the mind aspect was too close to one of J.D. Robb's books, and that pulled me out of the story as well.

I did love the integration of STEM, and Thea's relationships with her grandmother and brother are family goals. Ms. Roberts' writing style remains lovely. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3. Thank you to NetGalley and SMP for a complimentary ARC of this book. These opinions are my own.

What a family and set of characters! Grammie, Rem, and of course Thea just grabbed my attention and interest from their first moments. The love they have for family and their town, the trauma they experienced, and as the story progresses what they do with their lives is moving. Thea and Grammie have a gift, it is a creative one, but it also brings sadness and too much knowledge at times. The story is broken into three parts which allows a great deal of attention and development to this history and characters and helps ensure a richness of the community, family and emotions. The crimes are shared graphically, but fittingly, to convey the tragedy and the gift. The romance is sweet and fairytale esq, but definitely in addition to the story, not the focus of the story. I loved the progression and outcome and hope for more books with this crew of characters!

Roberts


Fast paced and thrilling MIND GAMES by Nora Roberts has a surprisingly heartwarming undertone. After a heinous crime orphans Thea and her brother, they start a new life with their loving grandmother. But for Thea it is impossible to move on from the awful circumstances of her parents’ death. Thea was born with a psychic power that allows her to remain in contact with her parents’ murderer. When this power turns out to be a threat to Thea’s safety, she must find a way to rid herself of the connection with the monster who has shadowed her life for fifteen years. 5 stars #netgalley #mindgames

Mind Games by Nora Roberts is the first book in a new trilogy. The book has the usual Nora Roberts characters. Strong woman, strong man, and several great side characters. I really enjoyed the story. I have always enjoyed Ms. Roberts’ writing and plots. Being part of a trilogy, it does not wrap up the book.
Thea the main character has inherited the ability to read minds. She can put the killer of her parents in jail, but they are linked by their ability to read minds.
The story is good. I liked the way Thea grew up and has a great life. I am waiting for the next one in the series, so I learn more. Thank you for the book.

Thank you @stmartinspress and @netgalley for my complimentary digital copy. My thoughts are my own.

Twelve-year-old Thea has a gift. She has a special sight, that allows her to see into the minds of others. She can discernwhat they think and what they see. But one night, while young Thea is visiting her grandmother in Kentucky, her parents are murdered in Virginia. Thea wakes from a nightmare in which she had watched her parents’ murder. Thea is able to give the police detailed information that enables them to catch the killer. Thea and her brother live with their grandmother in Kentucky, but meanwhile, the killer, who also has the same sight as Thea, haunts her mind and threatens her.

I loved the overall storyline in this one, but it is definitely a slow-burn, as A LOT of time is devoted to twelve-year-old Thea and her younger brother as they grow up in the mountains. However, Nora Roberts tells a great story and I was enthralled from the beginning. Just as I was beginning to wonder if the characters would EVER grow up, they finally did, about halfway through the book! I enjoyed the adult Thea as she comes into her own and meets her childhood crush, rock star Ty Brennan, who happens to move in next door. Ty has a young son, Bray, and Thea’s relationship with Bray is developed extensively as well. I would definitely have preferred less time to have been devoted to Thea’s childhood as she made soap and candles and learned how to cook at her grandmother’s hand, but I did enjoy the story.

Read this if you enjoy:

*Strong family ties

*Descriptive stories

*Strong female main characters

*A touch of romance