First in trilogy with nifty ploy

Readers of Nora Roberts will probably know she has written close to 200 novels, many of them trilogies and quartets. The Next Always is the first in a trilogy: each in turn focuses on the love life of one the three Montgomery brothers.

First up is Beckett, who has always fancied Clare Brewster, who is back in town running a bookshop.

There are complications, in that Clare is the widow of a soldier and has three young sons. A cookie-cutter romance but pleasant enough.

The background is the town of Boonsboro, Maryland, where the Montgomery family is turning a near-derelict building into a boutique hotel.

The town really exists and so does Inn Boonsboro, owned by Roberts and exactly as described in the book. As a marketing ploy that is hard to beat, for one imagines numerous readers happy to pay $US350 ($NZ460) a night to stay there.

• Gillian Vine is a Dunedin writer.