Landscaping 101 - Predictable - Evil Men

This review is more of a likes/dislikes about the book.

This was my first book by Nora Roberts. As a romantic suspense writer myself, I decided to check out a Nora Roberts book after reading so many positive things about her writing. And my review is of course only for the title here, so this is in no way reviewing Ms. Roberts as a whole, but all I know is this book. Also, I will skip the summary of what happens as there are plenty of those out there and I’m assuming you’ve read the book if you’re reading this. This review is based on the audio book.

Under Currents has three parts to it. The first part was strong and even though there were areas I questioned in the book, I would give part one 4.5 out of 5 stars. Part two and three were at most 2 stars a piece.

Things I liked:
- The story moved. I found myself wanting to know what happens next whenever I stopped listening to the book.
- The narrator is talented and does a decent job differentiating herself between characters.
- I rooted for the main characters, Zane, Britt (his sister) and Darby (love interest) for most of the book.
- I learned a lot about landscaping.
- There were parts of the story that I got excited to see unfold.
- Although I didn’t cry at all, I was on the edge of my seat several times.
- Nora paints a great picture with description of the scenery.

Things I didn't like:
- Predictability... I continuously called out in my mind what was going to happen. As soon as part one came to a close, the rest of the book was easy to figure out. Especially the ending. It was clear as day that Darby and Zane would wind up together the second Darby entered the story. It dragged on way to long. I wanted Graham (Zane’s father) to show back up since his jail term was over when part two ended yet we had to go on and on about Darby and landscaping and then the bad flirting between her and Zane before what we all knew would happen finally did and they hooked up. I found myself wanting to skip a few chapters in hopes that the landscaping and pre-flirting before the real flirting, before the actual “we like each other” moments would be over and the story would be back on. Also, I knew that Trent (Darby’s ex-husband) was going to be the villain as soon as Graham got locked up the second time. There was something like 6 hours remaining out of the 15 hour audio book and it was clear as day that Trent would come back into the picture. It made the ending annoying because you knew exactly who the bad guy was that the author attempted to keep a surprise. It wasn't. At all.

- To piggyback on the last part, I can't for the life of me understand why Nora didn't keep Zane's parents, or at least his father, Graham, as a suspect and keep him involved. This book would have been so much better if either it stopped shorty after Graham went back to prison, or if he escaped, got out early, something, anything involving him being a big part still rather than bringing in pretty much the exact same character to be the bad guy at the end. There should have been at least 50 more pages with Graham in the book. I felt like I waited through all the annoying landscaping/Darby stuff, eagerly waiting for Graham to return, then he does for like ten pages and he’s out of the picture with 5 hours of the audio book remaining. This was when I completed the book in my head and wrote down exactly what I expected will happen the rest of the way and I was 100% accurate.

- Another piggyback; Trent and Graham were literally the same exact person. They said the same evil things, word for word about their women being "cu*ts" and “sl*ts” etc. They both beat their wives, went to jail, got out and came after the one's that wronged them. The same personality, the same actions, words spoken, even the same attempted murders.

- OK, looks like all of these will be piggybacks... The portrayal of men in this book is a tad outrageous. I understand there are creeps and ass holes in the world, but the author (Nora Roberts of course) had four men in this books all be horrible men. Graham, Trent, Clint Draper, Clint Draper's father (there were a couple others but they had very small parts). All of them ran in the same-ish circle and all beat their wives, were complete abusive jerks to their children, treated women like animals and either were murderers or tried to murder people. Just the one would have sufficed. MAYBE have another one as a twist, but come on... I kept wondering is Nora truly believes most men are abusive horrible people who don't mind throwing away everything they have in order to murder or beat women.

- A few small nitpicky things I was annoyed with:
(1) There must have been 100 references to coke/Coca-Cola and nothing but insanely unhealthy snacks and food being consumed. The main characters (Darby and Zane) were described as muscular, fit, and healthy, yet their diet choices throughout the entire book were coke, cupcakes, pizza, sweet tea, and pasta.
(2) The deep southern accents. I live in the city this book was featured in and I'd say maybe 5% of the people you meet have a southern accent. In this book's audio version, every single person sounds like they're from Alabama in the 1960's.
(3) Zane carried an authentic sized baseball in his pants pocket through most of part three. He carries it in meetings, events, dinners, etc. It's how he stops the villain, Trent, at the end, by throwing it at him. I feel like Nora spent the whole 3rd part of the book planting this baseball in Zane's possession just so she could end it with him throwing the ball at Trent's face to stop him from killing Darby. Only problem with that is, there's no way a baseball fits in jeans or dress pants without being incredible uncomfortable and noticeable. He would have to only be wearing cargo shorts in order to carry a baseball around like that.
(4) All of the male voices (this is just for the audio version) sounded the same. They all sounded angry, slow, and old. Even when the male character was supposed to be happy, he would sound pissed and short with his angry response to whomever was talking to him. Even during romantic moments. I kept wondering why the men were so mad. I do believe the narrator was very talented and did the best she could for playing the voice of every character, but it was hard to get used to.
(5) Part two and most of part three are saturated with landscaping information. I kept thinking the landscaping was going to have a huge thing to do with how the book ended but it doesn’t. It’s just what Darby does for a living. The audio book was 15 hours long. If the landscaping talk was cut in half, the book would have been 12 hours long and nothing would have been missed.
(6) I know this isn’t going to be a popular opinion from other reviews I’ve read, but I found Darby annoying for most of her parts in the book. I wanted good things for her and rooted for her as a person, but between the landscaping obsession, her calling herself “hot” many times, and her “I don’t need your help” attitude toward Zane when he was just trying to be protective of her, I found it hard to really like her. She was very nosey, bossy, arrogant, and wouldn’t stop talking.
(7) There were some scenes that were so intense for no reason. The little kids baseball game did nothing for the story but prove it was a small town kind of place, however, one of the innings in the baseball game was treated like the last play in the world series. I kept thinking something huge was about to happen, but then the kid hit a pop-up fly and it was caught and the inning ended. It meant nothing at all except, they like baseball…
(8) The sex scenes are very bland, which is fine if you don’t want that stuff in your book, I can dig it, but it was also unbelievable. Zane was so angry sounding whenever he said anything. He would do creepy things like say “mmmmmmm yes” and sound so pissed and aggressive when he was trying to be sexy about Darby taking her clothes off. This isn’t Nora as much as the readers’ voice/tone, so I’ll give her a slight pass there since I didn’t read the book myself and for all I know it came across less creepy that way. However, her description of these romantic scenes were quite odd. I can’t imagine it’s too common for a woman to say she has “ninja skills” and call herself “hot” while the man grunts and sounds like he wants to kill the woman getting naked next to him.
(9) Graham uses his wife’s iPad in a hotel many times when he’s coming after Zane and Darby. If he did that, the cops would have found him minutes after he connected to the internet.
(10) I don’t know if Nora does this in all her books, so if she does, then I’ll take this back, but I didn’t see a reason for the quotes dropped at the start of many of the chapters. They weren’t very good ones and didn’t seem to match the book or help it along whatsoever.
(11) The portrayal of men, ie: evil monsters, was a little much. If one of these horrible murderer men was changed to a crazy female it would have been more believable. Not because it needed a crazy female, but because all the guys were the same psychotic person, like there was something in the water but only men drank it. They had the same dirty mouths, physical abuse and loved killing people to get back at them.
(12) Clint Draper masturbating on the welcome mat was overkill. Not to mention the guy was blackout drunk so it would have taken him quite a while to “get there”. It just didn’t seem needed. Spit or urine would have sufficed to gross out the reader.
(13) This one was just lazy. Darby is a heavy sleeper, that’s fine, but she slept through multiple gun shots in the room she was sleeping in, shattering the glass windows and doors IN THAT ROOM and Zane says she slept through it. Not buying that.
(14) “The twins” as I call them, Trent and Graham, both say several times “you stole my life and I want it back”. After reading reviews that say Nora rights several books a year, I am beginning to understand some of these parts that appear lazy. It would have been very easy for her to at the very least have one of them have a different line to say when he’s attacking the hero.
(15) Zane throws a baseball and doesn’t do anything else to Trent when he’s trying to kill Darby. I would think he would tie him up or continue beating him in that moment. Not just hoping the baseball was enough. I just can’t get over picturing Zane trying to squeeze a whole baseball out of his jeans pocket so he can use it as a weapon. “Hold, on, just a minute! Stay right there. Almost got it!”
(16) Zane and Darby start planning their wedding the same day of the big ending where Darby almost dies and Zane beats up Trent. Just a few short hours after a moment that would take most people weeks to relax from and they’re sitting next to each other picking wedding dates and location. Come on now…


Some mistakes I jotted down:
(a) Micah says “Britt is just like my sister Chloe except she’s straight, has kids and is married” – However, he just mentioned earlier that his sister Chloe is in fact married…
(b) When Emily has Britt in her car after escaping from the hospital with her, she calls Dave and says “I have Emily” – but it’s Emily talking. She was supposed to say “I have Britt”. That may have been an error on the narrator, but I don’t know.
(c) Early in the book when Zane goes to a school dance, he is talking with his date afterward and she comments about how she can’t believe he doesn’t have a cell phone because everyone does and she wouldn’t know what to do without hers. Well, it’s in the 1990’s at that point, and I was their age in the 1990’s and no one had cell phones yet. If you were lucky or your family had money, maybe you had a pager. I think one guy in my entire high school had a cell phone in 1999 and he was rich.
(d) There’s references in part one to the kids playing with a Gameboy. Those were not a thing in the late 90’s at all. And they certainly weren’t around the same time cell phones became a regular thing.

For the life of me I can’t understand why so many people gave this a high rating. I am going to read some of her earlier work, but when I discussed Under Currents with readers of Nora’s other work, they felt she followed a formula for this one and seemed to mail it in. That being said, it’s not a bad book, I mean, I wanted to finish it and did in 3 days, so it kept my interest, but I expected much more from such a popular author. The predictability just came across amateurish in my opinion. But the worst part to me was the villains all having the same exact characteristics. I have read other reviews that tend to really like Darby’s personality, so I could be wrong there, but to me she was obnoxious. Maybe because as a reader I’m trying to fall in love with her like Zane is and she just isn’t my type.

I do want to thanks Nora Roberts though because after reading this and seeing the reviews, I am very confident that I will be a best-selling author! That’s my review. Happy landscaping everyone!