Hidden Summit

The 17th in Carr’s Virgin River series (after Bring Me Home for Christmas) is sweet but lacks dramatic tension despite what should be a compelling premise. Leslie Petruso arrives in Virgin River, Colo., to escape an unpleasant ex-husband determined to be her best friend. Danson Conner witnesses a murder, enters a witness protection program, and is implausibly renamed Conner Danson before being sent to hide in the small town. Despite personal reasons to avoid intimacy, they nevertheless fall for each other. Rural life, the protagonists’ troubled backgrounds, and well-drawn secondary characters enhance the refreshingly realistic romance, but the denouement is too pat, as are the loose secondary elements of drug addiction, murder, and spousal abuse. Overall, this addition to the series offers a generally pleasant yet unexciting dip into a familiar setting. Agent: Liza Dawson Associates. (Jan.)