What: Shattered Souls
When: December 8th, 2011
Where: Penguin
Why: Cover/Premise Love
How: For Review (Tour)
Lenzi hears voices and has visions - gravestones, floods, a boy with steel gray eyes. Her boyfriend, Zak, can't help, and everything keeps getting louder and more intense. Then Lenzi meets Alden, the boy from her dreams, who reveals that she's a reincarnated Speaker - someone who can talk to and help lost souls - and that he has been her Protector for centuries.Now Lenzi must choose between her life with Zak and the life she is destined to lead with Alden. But time is running out: a malevolent spirit is out to destroy Lenzi, and he will kill her if she doesn't make a decision soon.
So when I started this book, I was kind of nervous. Initially it's very similar to Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton (warrior who gets reincarnated but doesn't remember this time around, guardian love interest that cannot be, having to learn the ropes again, etcc) but it's definitely not like that at all! Despite the similarities, Shattered Souls managed to impress me and I really liked it!
Lenzi was a fun main character to read about and her struggle with who she is vs. everything she's known in life was truthful and believable. Her character development was also wonderful: she went from this confused, scared girl to being a total badass and really coming into herself, even though she doesn't remember who she was and everything she had done before them. I liked Lenzi much more than I did Rose and I liked how Mary managed to show them to be the same person at the same time, very different from each other. Rose was much too detached and guarded and the contrast with Lenzi through Alden's memories was great to read!
The whole idea of Speakers was actually really interesting and I want to see it developed even further in the next book in the series. The whole idea of there being angry spirits in need of containing was fascinating, especially the whole possession factor and how exactly people went up or down in rank in their world. The whole idea of raking up the necessary weekly points of spirit-hunting? That was awesome! Mary packs a bunch with all the plot twists, heart-breaking scenes, and creepiness factors that are spread throughout the book!
And now we have side-characters! Zak: you didn't have my heart, EVA. While you could tell Zak really liked Lenzi, he went about the entire thing in a really aggressive and bad way. He was the only friend Lenzi had and he handled himself poorly and needs some serious help in the emotional stability department. Even though I did feel a little bad for him when Lenzi basically forgot about him the minute Alden arrives, I can't blame her! Alden was so lovely! Being her guardian, I loved how he was overprotective to a fault but never tried to push her to do something she didn't want to do without any sort of good reason. He was reasonable with slowly trying to get her back into the game and remember and the sexual tension between them was sizzling! I loved their attraction and the fact that Alden's so sweet and caring gave him major points!
Overall, I recommend the book, even if you did read Angelfire! Shattered Souls manages to stand on it's own!
Happy Reading!
