THE SEVEN RINGS is the third in The Lost Bride Trilogy and is a classic feel from romance powerhouse author Nora Roberts. Roberts is an uber-prolific writer, churning out about four books a year between her Nora Roberts romance books and her futuristic murder mysteries under the pen name J.D. Robb. Roberts has been doing trilogies and/or four-book series for years about witches who move to small towns and combat evil in their new lives. THE SEVEN RINGS follows her tried and true formula.

Sonya and her best friend Cleo, move into the haunted family mansion of Sonya’s long-lost family. While neither woman is a witch per se, the main character, Sonya, as well as her cousin Owen, are able to travel via magic through a mirror in the mansion and go back in time. There, they interact with the seven brides in Sonya’s family who have been murdered over a 200-year period to fuel a twisted witch named Hestor.

Sonya falls in love with a local lawyer named Trey. Cleo falls in love with Sonya’s cousin, Owen. There is no big romantic misunderstanding here; the tension comes from the magical plot and not from romantic misadventures. Together, the two couples work to defeat the malevolent Hester and to reclaim and restore Poole Manor.

It wouldn’t be a Roberts book without extensive house renovations, lovingly described in over-elaborate detail. There is also the typical Roberts embellishment about food — Cleo discovers how to cook and becomes quickly and too easily accomplished at all kinds of cooking.

THE SEVEN RINGS feels a bit rushed, especially at the end. The reader has made it through three full-length books featuring a big, bad, evil witch who repeatedly menaces them. Yet the resolution, where Sonya, Cleo, Trey, and Owen combine forces to defeat the witch, wraps up in a few quick chapters that feel awfully sparse on detail. It was a letdown and not worthy of the build-up of an entire trilogy. Roberts seems to be phoning it in more and more in her later books. Readers simply wanting a new tale may be satisfied, but readers who want a more compelling storyline would be better rewarded by enjoying some of her earlier works instead.