Nora Roberts – Luring a Lady

Nora Roberts is American author who has written several novels from couple of different genres, like romance, fantasy and suspense. Her real name is Eleanor Marie Robertson but she has used stage names as Nora Roberts, J. D. Robb, Sarah Hardesty and Jill March. Best she is known from her romantic novels, which also Luring a Lady is. It was published in 1991.
Luring a Lady is quite typical romantic novel. The events take place in New York and its vicnity. The protagonist is once-divorsed, sophisticated, young and beautiful woman whose name is Sydney Hayward. She has inherited a building company from her grandfather. While learning how to run a business, comes handsome, Hungarian artist called Mikhail Stanislanski to complain about the building he’s living in. And like you may guess, they get to know each other and fall in love after many twist and turns.
As a character Sydney changes a lot during the novel. At first she’s cold and purposeful business woman. She acts like she has been grown to act and doesn’t show much feelings. After spending time with Mikhail and his family she starts to be more open and express her emotions. So Mikhail literally melts the ice queen. Sydney’s relationships are quite distant, for example the relationship between her and her mother or her colleagues. Other significant characters are members of Mikhail’s family, Sydney’s ex Peter (who is also her childhood friend) and the neighbours who live in the same building as Mikhail.
The story is told by omniscient narrator. The language of the novel is very descriptive and things are told really minutely. However, the text is quite light and carefree and it won’t remain to disturb the reader. For that reason it’s a great novel to be read for example on holiday. Text is also very easy to read. The reader doesn’t have to focus on every single sentence to keep up with the story.
The theme of the novel could deal with falling in love of course, but also learning to express emotions and feelings bold as Sydney did at the end of the novel. It shows that under the cool shell human is emotional and sensitive and they shouldn’t just repress and push all the feelings aside even if they may predispose themselves to get hurt sometimes.
I personally liked the novel because it was easy to read and the plot was interesting even if it was also quite predictable. But I recommend it to someone who is searching for some fun, light and romantic novel to read.