“Stars of Fortune” Review

Warning: If you haven’t read “Stars of Fortune” by Nora Roberts, avoid reading this review if you don’t want spoilers. If you don’t mind spoilers or already read the book, feel free to read this!

I’m back with another book review, and this time it’s “Stars of Fortune” by Nora Roberts! Here’s a summary so we know what it’s about:

“Sasha Riggs is a reclusive artist, haunted by dreams and nightmares that she turns into extraordinary paintings. Her visions lead her to the Greek island of Corfu, where five others have been lured to seek the fire star. Sasha recognizes them, because she has drawn them: a magician, an archaeologist, a wanderer, a fighter, a loner. All on a quest. All with secrets.

Sasha is the one who holds them together—the seer. And in the magician, Bran Killian, she sees a man of immense power and compassion. As Sasha struggles with her rare ability, Bran is there to support her, challenge her, and believe in her.

But Sasha and Bran are just two of the six. And they all must all work together as a team to find the fire star in a cradle of land beneath the sea. Over their every attempt at trust, unity, and love, a dark threat looms. And it seeks to corrupt everything that stands in its way of possessing the stars…”

I really enjoyed reading all of the characters, due to their individually different personalities and how they were able to work together, but I found Sawyer and Annika to be the more intriguing out of all the main characters. Out of all the main characters, I particularly disliked Bran due to how he acted around Sasha, though I will elaborate on this later in this review.

The plotline itself was simple enough—introduce all the main characters and the main villain, and then let them have their first fight against each other—but I found that there was a lot of time allotted to the main six characters—Riley, Sasha, Bran, Annika, Sawyer and Doyle—for them to get to know each other and try to understand each other. Though this slowed down the main plotline, it allowed for each of these characters to develop as they worked together, fought together, and tried to understand each other. It also helped give time to establish the worldbuilding for this book as well.

When it came to the romances, I’m seeing an obvious main couple between Sasha and Bran as well as a potential couple between Sawyer and Annika. I liked the chemistry Sawyer and Annika had together in this book, as both of them were so sweet to each other, and I’m excited to see where this goes for the next book in this trilogy. However, I found myself despising Sasha and Bran’s romance. Not only are they quite terrible at communicating with each other, but Bran deliberately kisses Sasha while she is unconscious several times in this book and is also incredibly forwards towards her to the point of making her uncomfortable. Not only does Sasha not call him out for this, but she goes along with it and reasoning that it’s all romantic. Realistically, this is not romantic—it’s just plain creepy. If this romance continues in such a way, I may honestly start rooting for Bran to get killed off during the course of this trilogy.

I also disliked the writing of the main villain, Nerezza. I felt that her motivations for what she wants were a bit shallow, and overall she felt underdeveloped. I hope to see more development of her later on in this trilogy as well.

Overall, I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars, taking away half a star for the bad romance between Sasha and Bran, as well as the weak writing of Nerezza.

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