True Betrayals

Nora Roberts

Kelsey Byden is shocked to receive a letter from her mother. Her father told her that her mother was dead. Philip Byden is the head of the Georgetown University English department. He remarried when Kelsey was 18 to a woman that the girl accepted immediately. Now Kelsey learns that her father and grandmother have been lying to her for over 20 years. Her mother had been convicted of murder and had gone to jail. Naomi Chadwick told her ex-husband to tell their 3-year-old daughter she had died rather than having to visit the prison.

Naomi has followed Kelsey's life. When she learned Kelsey's divorce to an eminently suitable, cheating man, was final, she wrote to Kelsey and invited her daughter to her thoroughbred horse farm in Virginia. Against her father's wishes and grandmother's forbidding, Kelsey decides to meet her mother. She accepts an invitation to stay at Three Willows for a month to get a better understanding of the older woman.

Although strangers with her mother, Kelsey immediately is attracted to Three Willows and the horses. One special horse has a good chance of winning the Kentucky Derby. Quickly she gets involved with the horse farm life, getting up at dawn, mucking out stalls, and working with the horses. She takes the chance to try to get to know her mother. She gets to choose whether she wants to keep Naomi in her life.

Gabe Slater, the owner of the neighboring horse farm, is a different matter. She doesn't get to choose whether he comes into her life or not. He insists on getting to know Kelsey a lot better.

What not one of the three knows is that history has come back to haunt them. Around the same time Naomi killed a man in self defense, but couldn't prove, another prize horse had been killed in a race. Another jockey accidently knocked into him and broke his legs. The other jockey had given enhancing drugs to his horse. There was more to the story than anyone knew. Now some of the hidden participants from the past have returned. Kelsey, Gabe, and Naomi are all in danger.

True Betrayals is Nora Roberts in fine form. Roberts brings the day to day business of horse racing to life. She shows the drudgery behind that two minutes of excitement of a race. Horse racing is a business life anything else, with a different product. It has ethical owners, jockeys, trainers, etc., and ones who will try to fix a race. Kelsey watches with shock when a horse falls in the Kentucky Derby, murdered.

Gabe and Kelsey's relationship is properly rocky from the moment she meets him and assumes he is her mother's lover. Gabe is a very appealing bad boy type - a gambler who won his dream on a game of cards. His dream was to own a horse farm. Now he does and has a horse that also could be a contender for the Kentucky Derby. He is focused on what he wants and works to get it. Now he wants Kelsey.

The different family dynamics are woven together in True Betrayals in the ways all families function. Kelsey has always been close to her father and still loves him despite learning about her mother. Her grandmother rules the family, reminding them of their name and station in life. Naomi has learned the hard way that being innocent doesn't always protect you. She has never stoppled loving her daughter and wants to get to know the woman Kelsey has become. Gabe has an alcoholic, con man father with a gambling problem. Gabe left his father when he was 14 and now avoids the man unless he has no choice.

True Betrayals is a strong novel with a delicious romance and exciting, nerve wracking suspense. This is the type of book that keeps me returning to Nora Roberts.

Notice:  Non-graphic violence, Strong indecent language, Strong sexual content