Review Detail

What can I say? Shattered Souls was terrific. I’m not known for dabbling in the YA paranormal side of the book world, but people like Mary Lindsey are showing me that not all of it is trashy smut. (I'm not sure why, but I always thought of the majority of it being that way.)

I bought Shattered Souls without having looked into it. Generally speaking, I read reviews for books written by authors I’ve never read before. This one was a gamble for me, but the cover was beautiful and the synopsis on the back was just too hard to resist. I could’ve picked ten books at B&N that day. I limited myself to two. It didn’t take me long to realize there was no way I was leaving without Shattered Souls.

Put yourself in a world where your father died of schizophrenia, and now you’re hearing voices. Pretty scary right? You’d start thinking that you’re going insane. But, thank goodness for Lenzi, she has Alden (*swoon*), who explains everything. If you’ve ever seen the show “Ghost Whisperer” with Jennifer Love Hewitt, you kind of have an idea of what Lenzi’s job is. Hold on though. Lenzi can hear the dead but her job is also ten times cooler than Hewitt’s was in “Ghost Whisperer.” Like Hewitt, Lenzi has to help the dead move on but occasionally, she comes across a very angry ghost, and that’s when things get dicey…. I found the process of her helping the dead move on to be much more interesting. Honestly, the change brought the danger up to a significantly higher level, which made it much more entertaining.

Lenzi was a wonderful narrator. I found her to be very realistic every step of the way. The inner battle she had between believing she was insane and believing she wasn’t, was perfect. She had just the right mix of doubt that made her eventual belief in the latter realistic but not too much that it seemed unrealistic. Her interactions with Alden often made me smile. Here’s a boy she barely knows who is telling her something impossible and she’s thinking he’s crazy but hot. The author didn’t go overboard with this though. Most of the time, Lenzi was a protagonist who was very focused on the mystery in front of her. Noticing how hot Alden is was just a coincidence.

Alden was wonderful and he’d do anything to keep Lenzi safe. His knowledge brought new depth to Lenzi’s character (not that she was shallow before), which served the plot very well. He was a very pleasant character to follow and read about and I think he and Lenzi are both characters that people will easily identify with.

One thing I really like about Shattered Souls is its similarity with other YA books while also being different at the same time. The author handled the love story perfectly. Watching Lenzi and Alden fall in love was such a treat. And the writing flowed very nicely and was easy to understand. I really don’t have any complaints.

P.S. I really love this cover. The details of individual rose petals add so much depth. The background adds an imaginary texture to the cover that also really appeals to me.