It’s generally a good bet that whenever you’re heading into a Nora Roberts storyline with an ensemble cast, a good amount of the story is going to be devoted to who’s going to pair off with whom. Three Fates is no exception, even though it’s a single novel as opposed to a trilogy starring her interconnected characters.
This time around the story hinges on a trio of statues, the Three Fates, named after the beings from Greek mythology. The statues have been separated over the centuries, and much effort has been expended by collectors to reunite them; it’s said that the group, restored to each other, will be spectacularly valuable. One was nearly lost in the sinking of the Lusitania, and the survivor who recovered it, a petty thief, has passed it down to his descendants–who have in turn lost it to the machinations of a ruthless collector from New York who’s bent on acquiring the other two. The Sullivans are prepared to do whatever it takes to recover what they’ve lost, and to find their Fate’s missing sisters as well.
Naturally the other two are in the hands of the love interests that two of the three Sullivans pair up with, and eventually we get the central core of six characters teaming up against the antagonist. As is generally the case, Roberts’ lead characters are likeable in their various fashions, although in this case the women are more interesting than the men; Tia, in particular, is notable as a painfully shy and neurotic character who has the biggest character development arc as she conquers her various phobias and becomes a more confident woman.
It was a bit of a shame that the plot never really progressed past ‘likeable’, though. Antagonist Anita in particular was fairly cardboard and petty, and so the determination of our heroes and heroines to bring her down didn’t have quite as much weight and substance as it should have done. Three stars.