Shattered by Sophia Sharp

Reading Hammock’s Rating:	2 ½
Category:	Fiction
Fiction Genre:	Paranormal
Title:	Shattered
Author:	Sophia Sharp
Author Website:	http://sophiasharp.blogspot.com
ASIN:	B0056U9X20
Publication Date:	June 18, 2011
Publisher:	Dream Publishing
Format:	Digital
Amazon

Synopsis:

Laura Cubus was perfectly content with her life. A junior in high school, she felt perfectly normal. She had good friends, a great family, and did well in school. Nothing particularly exciting ever happened where she lived, and everything was stable.

But that all drastically changes when a new student arrives at Laura's school. Wild rumors swirl about his past, and Laura becomes determined to find out the truth. 

As she gets to know the mysterious student, he shares with her an ancient secret... one that may yet put both of them in grave danger.

And for the first time in her life, Laura is exposed to a completely unfamiliar world. She is swept away on an exhilarating journey that takes to a place where great destiny may yet await... and where supernatural powers run rampant. 

My review:

Sharp did an okay job with “Shattered”, the first book of the Dream Realms series.  While I found the novel intriguing, I was not as satisfied with it as were other reviewers.  For my taste, the book was not long enough to fit Sharp’s complex plot.  I do not plan on reading the other novels in this series, as I felt that “Shattered” is trying too hard to hook the reader into buying the entire series.  With a longer book, Sharp could have more fully developed all aspects of her story and hooked me into wanting to know what would happen in the next installment. 

Throughout the novel, Sharp uses the element of mystery to keep the story interesting.  While the mystery aspect worked, I felt that Sharp cheated me by not revealing enough about the characters, until the very end of the novel.  This overwhelmed the reader and made me feel that she intended to write a sequel to “Shattered”, instead of having a sequel naturally develop around the plot.  A longer book would have probably convinced me to continue reading the series instead of feeling overburdened at the end by revealed mysteries.   

As a result of the overused sense of mystery, I felt that the characters were underdeveloped.  One of the main characters, Logan was only mentioned as a mysterious person and did not seem to have any distinct personality traits.  Characters need time to develop naturally and come alive in a story. 

The novel ended in an action-packed scene, with a cliffhanger.  Usually, when I read the first book in a series, I have to immediately buy the next book.  Unfortunately, in the case of “Shattered”, I never became attached to the story’s two-dimensional characters and, therefore, will not be racing to the bookstore for the rest of the Dram Realms series.

 I would not recommend putting “Shattered” on the urgent reading list anytime soon.