Key of Valor by Nora Roberts (2003)

I've been a fan of Nora Roberts for quite some time. She is one of my favorite authors and I have most of her books on my shelves. I will admit that there have been a few books of hers I haven't enjoyed at all. I tell you this only to show that I am not completely biased.

Key of Valor is the third book in the Key Trilogy. While I enjoyed the first two books, Key of Light and Key of Knowledge, I found Key of Valor infinitely more entertaining.

Three thousand years ago three demigoddess sisters had their souls stolen and locked away by Kane, an opposer of their father, the King. Their teacher and their bodyguard were held accountable, having been too enraptured with each other to adequately guard the sisters. The King banished them from the land of Celtic gods until such a time as three mortal women could be found to find the keys that would release the souls of his daughters.

The teacher, Rowena, and her husband, the warrior Pitte, tried again and again to find the women capable of these feats, to no avail. Then they found Mallory, Dana and Chloe.

Offering them an incentive of $25,000 up front and an additional million if they keys are found, Rowena and Pitte have intrigued the women to try, though, if they fail, they would each loose a year of their lives.

Mallory and Dana have each found their key; now it is Chloe's turn.

Chloe grew up in a backwoods trailer park in West Virginia, raised by an embittered single mother. She worked hard to help her mother support herself and her siblings and dreamed of going on to greater things. At sixteen she fell in love and became pregnant, but soon found herself facing the prospect of single motherhood. She made the choice to leave it all behind and start out on her own, determined to give her son a better life. She has fought hard for the life she has created for herself and her ten year old son, struggling for every success along the way. She has her own little house- a real house that warms her heart, great friends and will soon be opening a business with her two best friends, women she met only months before through Rowena and Pitte.

Chloe feels she is more prepared than her friends were, having had the advantage of watching them take their turns. While the danger has escalated and the rules have changed with the finding of each key, Chloe is sure she will succeed.

Things would be easier if there were not so many changes in her life at the same time that she is in search of the key, but she is a single mother and multi-tasking is what they do best. She is struggling to resist the advances of Brad, a man who loves her, but whose wealth reminds her of the boy who fathered her son and abandoned her. She is working hard to prepare for the grand opening of her store, Indulgence, where she, Mallory and Dana will be opening a joint art gallery, book store and beauty parlor. She is raising her son on her own. And now she must find the key.

Chloe's quest for the key is not so much a physical journey, as it is a journey of self discovery. As she tackles the ghosts of her past and gets closer to finding the key, Kane becomes more and more unwilling to follow the rules of the game. He attempts to manipulate, mislead, and outright attack to stop her, but Kane has never been one to understand the workings of the human mind and greatly underestimates Chloe.

Chloe is stronger than anyone, even herself, believed. The struggles she has been through in life have made her a warrior, not one who carries a sword, but one who carries valor and strength of will as her weapons.

In her battle against Kane, her journey of self discovery and love and her quest for the key, Chloe learns to not only embrace who she is, but to grow beyond the lessons of her past.

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From the first page I found I couldn't put the book down. I had been looking forward to reading it, but I was even more taken in than I expected to be.

The plot isn't an in-depth miracle of literary genius, but it is entertaining and complicated enough to hold ones attention. One comes to care for the characters, even those who have taken a back seat along the way. Roberts has done a wonderful job creating characters who are fallible, yet still loveable. Finding the balance between too perfect and too flawed is a task that many authors seem to have trouble with, but I see no evidence of that in this book. Chloe learns that she has to find her own balance between completely letting go of the past and letting her past dictate her every action and decision; that there must be a medium between the two. Simon, her adorable son, was another pleasant surprise, written as a child instead of a child who acts like an adult (I can not stress enough how much I hate it when authors create child characters who don't act anything like a child). Brad, Chloe's love interest in the story, is just about perfect in the reality-based sense of the word. He is no perfect gentleman or perfect barbarian, but a wonderful man who comes to love both Chloe and Simon.

The reader has the advantage of having already gotten to know all the characters a bit if the first two books in the trilogy have been read. Some may find it disappointing that the main characters from the previous two books take such a back seat, but I found no fault there, their stories had already been told.

The resolution of this trilogy is incredibly touching, with Chloe proving, to the end, that she is a woman who cares for those around her and will sacrifice to make them happy. The book is full of connections...connections between friends, between enemies and between family. It says much about the continuity of life and how even our mistakes must be valued in some way.

Definitely worth the read and graded an "A" by Petrescu.