{Book Review} Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey

Synopsis:

Death, love, destiny, and danger! Lenzi knows she must be going crazy. She's hearing voices and having visions--specifically of gravestones, floods, and a gorgeous guy with steely gray eyes. And there's nothing anyone can do to help, not even her handsome musician boyfriend, Zak. Until she meets Alden, the boy from her dreams, and learns she can speak with lost souls. Now Lenzi must choose: destiny or normalcy. Alden or Zak. Life or death. And time is quickly running out.

Shattered Souls was one of those middle of the road books for me. I didn’t LOVE it, but it was good. I enjoyed it. I thought the idea of the book was clever, and not an overused YA trope. There was sort of a love triangle, but it didn’t last long.

If you’re like me and you aren’t a fan of love triangles, don’t let the synopsis scare you away from this book. It’s not as important to the plot as it sounds.

So Lenzi can see and hear ghosts that have unfinished business, and she’s supposed to help them resolve whatever issues they have so that they can pass on peacefully. There were a couple of places where it felt like Mary Lindsey just put a passage in where Lenzi did one of these resolutions just to prove to the reader that she could. It didn’t really move the plot along, it was more like, oh here, she can do this, remember?

Alden. The more that I think about him, he kind of annoys me. I mean, sure he’s all swoon worthy and heroic and adorable, but he’s also TOTALLY jerking Lenzi around. He’s supposed to be her Protector, but he keeps her in the dark about so many things and then he’s like KISS ME and she does and then he’s like NO YOU CAN’T KISS ME.

It’s totally ok to be conflicted, Alden. It makes you even more attractive. But this whole wishy-washy business is exhausting.

That being said, their relationship was very sweet, and I was of course rooting for them the entire book. 

A lot of the book was teaching Lenzi how to be a Speaker. The main conflict didn’t really emerge until late in the story. This was fine because Lindsey was giving us the foundation of the world she’s written her novel in; the world is both fun and creepy. From the very intimate soul-sharing to the Intercessor Council, Lindsey created a setting that seems far-fetched, and yet at the same time, eerily probable.

Once the big bad emerges, things go downhill fast, and I had to race through the end of the book to see what happens. Lets just say things get rough for a little bit there. Thankfully, Lindsey leaves us with a satisfying ending. The second book in this series spotlights new characters, though the main guy was mentioned in Shattered Souls. It’ll be fun to see new characters in this established world, especially ones with very different stories from Lenzi and Alden.

If you liked Shattered Souls, you’ll probably like: Grasping at Eternity, Paranormalcy, Angelfire