Nowhere to Run is exactly the kind of series romance I’ve been hungry for lately. On the surface, it has a storyline that wouldn’t seem uncommon today. The heroine is a single mother; the hero is on the run from a killer, trying to protect a young child. The difference is in the richness of the storytelling and the characters, two items in short supply in the series world these days.

The summer Annie Winston was sixteen, she met Cody Hale. They soon fell in love, and he asked her to marry him, only to then disappear from her life without a word. Eleven years later, Annie is a divorced single mother raising her young daughter, Lina. Out of the blue, she receives a letter containing a single two-word phrase: “Hummingbird Hill.” Hummingbird was Cody’s nickname for her, and the phrase was their code to let each other know when one of them was in trouble. Against her best instincts, Annie goes back to the lodge where they met that summer, and finds Cody waiting for her.

Cody never would have contacted Annie if he’d had a choice, but he’s flat out of options. He’s the only thing standing between five-year-old Shannon and the man who killed her mother. With his money running out and nowhere left to go, he turns to Annie, trusting that his pursuer won’t be able to connect them. Immediately recognizing the desperate situation Cody is in, Annie offers to let them stay with her at her home in Santa Monica. There, it’s a matter of dealing with Annie’s suspicious ex and the constant fear that Cody’s pursuer might have found them.

There are books that signal from the very first page that they’re going to be good. This is one of them. Within the first few paragraphs, I was caught up in Cody’s dilemma, as he drives down a country road in the middle of the night toward a woman he once swore he’d never have anything to do with again, determined to protect the sleeping child at his side. The writing is strong and assured, perfectly setting the mood and grabbing the reader in the emotions of the scene. That sense of you-are-there emotional involvement carries through to the very last page. Frankly, the book is simply better written than any recent series book I’ve read in a long while.

This isn’t the kind of romantic suspense that depends on intricate plotting, breakneck pacing, grisly murders or surprise twists. The storyline is relatively straightforward. The author introduces the villain early on, his motivations are laid out fairly soon, and he remains offstage for most of the book. The story is more character-driven. It works because the author creates a group of characters who feel vivid and real from top to bottom, from the hero and heroine, to the children, all the way down to Annie’s dogs, Daffy and Donald. The characters are involving, so the story is too.

Annie and Cody share that kind of lingering love that has made all their other relationships in the intervening years pale by comparison. It’s one of the reasons her marriage to Jeff didn’t last. That’s one of those romance novel devices that often rubs me the wrong way, but the author pulls it off here. I believed in these characters, and their emotions were convincing enough to sell me on their love (I had a harder time with Annie’s willingness to put her daughter at risk by inviting Cody’s trouble into their world.) One of the most deeply felt moments that really hit me didn’t belong to the hero and heroine, but to the adorable Shannon. She’s been promised she’ll get to go to Disneyland while they’re in Southern California. When Annie’s ex arrives with an offer to take Lina, Shannon’s horror that she might be left behind is captured just as keenly as any of the adults’ emotions, and it’s heartbreaking. (Rest assured, she gets to go.) If I’d had any doubt as to how real these characters had become to me, that moment certainly erased it.

The story’s main antagonist isn’t the villain. It’s Annie’s ex-husband, Jeff, a local prosecutor who’s instantly suspicious of Cody and becomes determined to find out the truth about his ex-wife’s houseguest. But Jeff isn’t a bad guy. Everything he does is for all the right reasons, no matter the havoc it causes for Cody and Annie. Meanwhile, the plot follows Polo Polonowski, the private detective hired by the man hunting for Cody, as he follows Cody’s trail and gradually becomes suspicious about his client’s motives. They’re a good indication of how the character development goes beyond the main characters to the most minor of supporting ones.

In the interest of full disclosure, I first read this book years ago. This isn’t a matter of idealizing an old favorite, though, because I didn’t really remember it. (Honestly, the only thing I did remember was how weird-looking the people on the cover are.) Reading it now was like reading it for the first time. It felt completely new and was better than I ever expected. The writing is strong, the characters live and breathe on the page, and their story is emotionally involving from start to finish. For anyone who’s been as starved for a good series romance as I have, here’s one that should satisfy.