Review: Shattered Promises (#1) by Jessica Sorensen
Shattered Promises (#1) by Jessica Sorensen
Published February 26th, 2013
(Good Reads): 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
Review:
This is a re-imaging of the Young Adult version The Fallen Star. Having not read that series I really wasn't sure as to what to expect with this. The content rating had changed to NC17+ so I figured some extra scenes were thrown in. That being said, I have no idea how similar/dissimilar they are. I will say that I enjoyed this start to the re-imaged series and the supernatural element has several different facets.
One thing I really liked is that there is a bit of everything going on in this book; from not yet eluded to supernatural beings to vampires to werewolves (?), and the like. What I found different in an enjoyable way was that these beings didn't all seem to completely hate each other. They have their differences, but the coexist for the most part. (That's not to say there isn't some tension between them). I'm not really sure where the story will go. This installment was more about Gemma discovering who she is, and why she is important for this theory of "The Light" to continue.
Sorensen did a pretty good job mixing romance and thrills into this para/suspense novel. It keeps you guessing about what is going on with Gemma until the end and leaves plenty of storyline open to where I think the next installments will do a great job picking up on. If you're someone who does not enjoy being kept in the dark about what is happening for a good 75% of the book - you may want to reconsider picking this one up.
What I didn't like was Sorensen's use of adjectives and phrasing. Sometimes when she was describing physical features of people it got so confusing I wasn't quite sure what they looked like or which character was being talked about! There were many times that I had to re-read some paragraphs to back-track.
And while it didn't quite scream juvenile, the descriptions of people, movements and interactions felt that way at times. Example: "I stare into his eyes and I mean really stare."
This is my second time reading a re-imaged YA to NA series (The other by Sorensen as well), and this is a common factor between the two. I think that transition to not only more mature content, but more mature dialog and descriptions can be hard to do for an already established series. Perhaps the author feels as though she can only change so much about the characters without leaving the dedicated readers of the original behind?
This emotional connection to the reader was slightly lost on me. The only way I could really tell that Gemma and Alex liked each other was through this "tingly", "prickly", "shocking" sensation - not so much emotional descriptions. Granted, for what the author was trying to convey I'm not sure how else she could have described this feeling...but it never came off as something that I could really envision.
Lastly, the steam factor is pretty good for a YA turned mature book. The scenes were realistically descriptive and there was a pretty intense car scene ;-) I have a feeling these will be ramped up in the next installment(s) - as will the overall structure of the book. This was very much a typical introductory book to a series.
I wouldn't recommend this to everyone. It's still very much a YA series with added mature scenes, and those scenes don't take away from some of the juvenile descriptions. I will likely continue on because I found it readable and interesting, and I'm curious to see where the rest of the series goes!
Another of Sorensen's re-imaged YA to NA series you might be interested in is Ember X (Based on the YA "Ember" series
Ratings:
Steam: ***
Character connection: ***+
Writing Quality: ***+
Plot (Progression/originality): *****
My rating:
I'm going to have to go with 3.5 on this one. While I think Shattered Promises has great potential as a more mature series, there are some short comings that leave me stuck just short of a solid 4.
Amazon: 4.0
Good Reads: 3.89
Published February 26th, 2013
(Good Reads): 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
Review:
This is a re-imaging of the Young Adult version The Fallen Star. Having not read that series I really wasn't sure as to what to expect with this. The content rating had changed to NC17+ so I figured some extra scenes were thrown in. That being said, I have no idea how similar/dissimilar they are. I will say that I enjoyed this start to the re-imaged series and the supernatural element has several different facets.
One thing I really liked is that there is a bit of everything going on in this book; from not yet eluded to supernatural beings to vampires to werewolves (?), and the like. What I found different in an enjoyable way was that these beings didn't all seem to completely hate each other. They have their differences, but the coexist for the most part. (That's not to say there isn't some tension between them). I'm not really sure where the story will go. This installment was more about Gemma discovering who she is, and why she is important for this theory of "The Light" to continue.
Sorensen did a pretty good job mixing romance and thrills into this para/suspense novel. It keeps you guessing about what is going on with Gemma until the end and leaves plenty of storyline open to where I think the next installments will do a great job picking up on. If you're someone who does not enjoy being kept in the dark about what is happening for a good 75% of the book - you may want to reconsider picking this one up.
What I didn't like was Sorensen's use of adjectives and phrasing. Sometimes when she was describing physical features of people it got so confusing I wasn't quite sure what they looked like or which character was being talked about! There were many times that I had to re-read some paragraphs to back-track.
And while it didn't quite scream juvenile, the descriptions of people, movements and interactions felt that way at times. Example: "I stare into his eyes and I mean really stare."
This is my second time reading a re-imaged YA to NA series (The other by Sorensen as well), and this is a common factor between the two. I think that transition to not only more mature content, but more mature dialog and descriptions can be hard to do for an already established series. Perhaps the author feels as though she can only change so much about the characters without leaving the dedicated readers of the original behind?
This emotional connection to the reader was slightly lost on me. The only way I could really tell that Gemma and Alex liked each other was through this "tingly", "prickly", "shocking" sensation - not so much emotional descriptions. Granted, for what the author was trying to convey I'm not sure how else she could have described this feeling...but it never came off as something that I could really envision.
Lastly, the steam factor is pretty good for a YA turned mature book. The scenes were realistically descriptive and there was a pretty intense car scene ;-) I have a feeling these will be ramped up in the next installment(s) - as will the overall structure of the book. This was very much a typical introductory book to a series.
I wouldn't recommend this to everyone. It's still very much a YA series with added mature scenes, and those scenes don't take away from some of the juvenile descriptions. I will likely continue on because I found it readable and interesting, and I'm curious to see where the rest of the series goes!
Another of Sorensen's re-imaged YA to NA series you might be interested in is Ember X (Based on the YA "Ember" series
Ratings:
Steam: ***
Character connection: ***+
Writing Quality: ***+
Plot (Progression/originality): *****
My rating:
I'm going to have to go with 3.5 on this one. While I think Shattered Promises has great potential as a more mature series, there are some short comings that leave me stuck just short of a solid 4.
Amazon: 4.0
Good Reads: 3.89
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