Shattered Promises (Shattered Promises #1)
by Jessica Sorensen
Summary: **Mature Content Warning** 17+ for language and sexual content.
(A re-imagining of my young adult book, The Fallen Star, told as a New Adult Paranormal)
For twenty-one year-old Gemma, life has never been normal. She knows nothing about her past and has been haunted by the same monsters in her nightmares for the last few months. Unemotional and numb to life, she feels disconnected from everyone. Until the very first day she cries. After that, nothing in her life is the same.
Her emotions slowly surface and she starts experiencing love, happiness, and anger, feelings she never knew existed. But they leave her confused and she doesn’t know whether to embrace them or run away from them.
Her life only gets more complicated when she meets Alex. Sexy, arrogant, and secretive, Alex can get under Gemma’s skin like no one can. Yet she’s drawn to him by an invisible connection she has no control over. She’s also seen him before. In her nightmares.
Every part of Gemma’s mind is screaming at her to stay away from Alex, but every other part of her is begging to get close to him. But the closer she gets, the more she realizes Alex knows more about her than he originally let on.
As secrets about her past unravel, Gemma’s life becomes threatened. She needs to figure out what’s going on, before she winds up dead. But the only person she can turn to for answers is the one person she isn’t sure she can trust.
Source: I purchased a copy of this book for Kindle.
Review:
I haven’t read much of Jessica Sorensen’s YA books, but I’m a huge fan of her NA romances, so I decided to pick up Shattered Promises as soon as I heard about it. Shattered Promises is a revamped version of her YA book, Fallen Star, remarketed as New Adult due to sexual content and age.
Shattered Promises is exactly what happens when all of that tension and angst in most other YA paranormal romances is amped up and then finally relieved. While I couldn’t read New Adult paranormal romance all of the time (I mean, holy crap, the main characters are so distracted by their own hormones!), I really enjoyed seeing a paranormal that was so much like YA but with more in terms of the main characters and their hormones, emotions, tension, angst, etc. If YA paranormal romance is your kind of genre, I highly recommend Shattered Promises if you’re ready to see the main characters get to release a little bit of that YA angst we all love so much.
However, I think you have to be in the right mood for Shattered Promises. The main characters do that thing where they lose sight of the actual plot around them and focus too much on each other. Gemma asked a lot of questions, but 50% of the time she was staring at Alex with lustful thoughts instead of listening to answers when the situation TOTALLY calls for listening. Shattered Promises is annoying that regard, so if you’re not in the mood for hormones being distracting, don’t pick it up just yet. Also, it is totally insta-lust, not insta-love, which is weird. And I’m not really sure if there’s a triangle or not. In fact, I hope there is, because I’m rooting for the other guy. He was a little less.. ugh. On another day, this might have been a 2 star book for me. So… fair warning.
The paranormal conflict was extremely interesting. Gemma was completely emotionless her entire life until one random day in college at the age of 21. Emotions hit her suddenly and she felt everything all at once. Her questions about her childhood remained unanswered by her stern and unloving grandparents and her dreams about yellow eyed creatures in the woods and the protection of a gorgeous man weren’t helping her solve anything. After she bumped into the man from her dream, Alex, and his sister, her life got a little more interesting. She figured out her story, who she was, what was out there, and what her place was in a new world with strange creatures she only read about in books. Fallen stars, witches, vampires, angels, and many more creatures resided in the world of Shattered Promises. Gemma was important, someone to protected, even if it meant keeping her in the dark. She didn’t know who she could trust, why she was riddled with emotions, what her electric connection with Alex meant, or how to escape those who were after her.
I will definitely continue the series and I recommend the book under the conditions I explained earlier. I am invested in the story, despite the distractions between Alex and Gemma. I am curious about the direction of the series, where the plot will go, and what will happen between Alex and Gemma. Or Gemma and that other guy…?
Shattered Promises is FREE for Kindle: