Shattered Promises by Jessica Sorensen

A re-imagining of the YA Fallen Star series, Shattered Promises follows Gemma, a 21 year old college student who has never felt emotion, until now. After being swamped by every emotion she's never felt, strange thing begin happening around Gemma. Two new students seem to appear everywhere she is, and hulking beasts watch her, promptly disappearing as soon as she takes notice. There's more to Gemma's world than what she's always believed, and she may not have long to find the answers.

For a supposedly mature book, I found this novel extremely immature. I could tell it was a rewrite of a young adult book because the characters remained immature. Unfortunately, they didn't grow into the age they were supposed to be. Alex, who is twenty four acts like a moody teenager, and for the fits Gemma throws I would place her right around sixteen. The content warning at the beginning of the description was unnecessary, because other than some cussing and very vague descriptions of sexual encounters, this wasn't a graphic book, and I would still shelve it as young adult. Compared to a lot of NA books that are out there, this is practically Dora the Explorer.

As far as the writing goes, it wasn't terrible, especially for an india author. However, there were a lot of words used incorrectly as adjectives and verbs and such. It felt like Jessica took a thesaurus to the book and tried to replace words she used too many times, however the words she replaced them with weren't quite right. Now, I will applaud the effort because there's nothing worse than repetitive writing, however it is important when using tools like a thesaurus to make sure the words actually mean the right thing, and aren't just similar.

Let's talk about Gemma. I really liked her as a character. I felt like she was relatable and often times I would find myself asking a question, and she would ask it the very next line. Here's the deal though, she acted like a teenager, not a twenty year old. If I had read this with the expectation of a YA book with teenage characters, I would have liked it a lot more. However, I was expecting more mature characters with less of the teenage angst, and so it did leave me feeling disappointed. If I wanted to read the YA version, I would read the original.

The supporting characters never really gain any substance in the book. Laylan comes close, but he's in the book for such a short time that we never really grasp his character. I think he has a lot of potential, and I was actually upset that he wasn't in the book more, because what we do see of him definitely makes him the most mature character in the book. Aislin, Alex's sister is in short scenes throughout the book, but she's always just there, only ever contributing with a few spells.

Alex I really wanted to like, but as I said before, he acts like a moody teenager, not someone in their mid twenties. At first he is a huge jerk, and I don't mean like the sassy jerk in a lot of YA books these days that you love to hate and hate to love, but I mean actually someone I would slap in the face. He pushes her over, he lets a door slam into her, and is constantly being an ass. After he finally warms up to her his and Gemma's interactions are strange. He's always restraining her, and in an awkward way, too. Half their conversations he has her laying on her back with him laying over her talking down to her. Whenever they make out he grabs her hands and pins them above her head. Once or twice that kind of thing can be hot, but I literally mean every single time they kiss. Alex was a strange character for me, and all of his explanations were vague, took a long time, and honestly just frustrated me.

The bottom line with this book is I like the cover (anything with stars like that draws me in), and I really want to love the story, but the immaturity of the supposedly mature characters just doesn't fly with me. The plot is original and I like the emotions twist, but in the end I can't see myself spending the time continuing with the series.

Two Stars

Rosalie Williams

Shattered Promises on Goodreads