“Light kills dark.” Nora Roberts concludes her Lost Brides trilogy with The Seven Rings, the unforgettable story set in Poole’s Bay, Maine in a manor haunted for two hundred years by a mad witch who covets the house Arthur Poole built for his family and descendants. Now, it’s up to Sonya MacTavish, a Poole descendant who inherits the house ,to work with three people she loves to end Hester Dobbs’ angry control of the manor.
Hester Dobbs killed the brides in the Poole family, and before jumping to her death to escape the hangman, she cursed the Poole women. A bride of each generation would die by Hester’s hand, and she stole their wedding rings in order to claim the power of the rings. But, as Sonya, her best friend, Cleo, her lover, Trey, and her cousin, Owen, grew to love Poole Manor, gathered together to break the curse, it was Cleo who said, “We have the light on our side.”
In a dramatic concluding book, Dobbs escalates her attempts to destroy Sonya. She attacks her, threatens Cleo, and tries to seduce Owen into killing his friends. With the advice of Cleo’s Creole Grand-Mere, the women find a few defenses against the witch’s dark arts. The deeper Sonya gets into restoring the manor with love, the more encouragement she gets from her own grandmother, Clover, one of the lost brides. Tension builds as the four friends plan to destroy the witch, and end her destructive reign over the manor.
Roberts’ characters, including the witch, are original and memorable. Although Sonya and her friends are a likable group, it’s hard not to fall in love with Clover and the ghosts of the servants who continue to maintain the manor. There’s a clever plot in this book, and the other books in the addictive trilogy. It’s a gripping, suspenseful story with a satisfying conclusion. In Roberts’ trilogies, the wickedness and evil escalate until love and light triumphs over hate, anger, and darkness.
Nora Roberts’ website is https://noraroberts.com/
The Seven Rings by Nora Roberts. St. Martin’s Press, 2025. ISBN 9781250288790 (hardcover), 464p.
FTC Full Disclosure – The publicist sent me a .PDF of the book with no promise of a positive review.
Looking forward to this one, but only the audiobook is available on NetGalley so far.
And, since today is release day, I suspect it won’t be on NetGalley, Margie.
LOVED thus trilogy!!!!
Me, too, Kaye. Maybe not quite as much as her Ireland fantasy, though.
I agree
Glad this 3rd book is now out and I can begin the trilogy. Think I’ll be reading it probably in January or so. It sounds like a good one for sure and I have really enjoyed some of Roberts’ trilogies in the past. Thanks for your thoughts, Lesa!
I love her trilogies, Kay, more than her other books.
Jackie got Nora’s newsletter this morning. She has the book on hold, of course.
I suspected she would, Jeff.