Thursday, December 20, 2012

Review: Shattered Souls by Mary Lindsey

Book: Shattered Souls
By: Mary Lindsey
Published: December 8, 2011
Published By: Philomel/Penguin
Description: A thrilling debut story of death, love, destiny, and danger


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.
My Thoughts: Shattered Souls is a love story about a girl who can speak with the dead, has visions, and according to most normal people, is pretty insane.

Lenzi is in high school. Her father recently committed suicide after being sent to a mental institution because he heard voices. Now, Lenzi can hear voices; voices that seem to want her help. Voices that seem to want to scare her and frighten her and steal her body and kick out her soul. The only person who knows how to really help her is a creepy stalker/lurker boy named Alden who just happens to be gorgeous and sends currents through Lenzi's body she can't seem to ignore. Of course that's a problem for Zak, Lenzi's overprotective and seemingly alcoholic boyfriend with abandonment issues.

As if dealing with hearing voices wasn't enough, Lenzi finds that Alden can somehow feel her emotions. That she's a Speaker and he's her protector and that she must help lost souls cross over. On top of that, Zak's getting dangerously jealous, Lenzi is growing deep feelings for Alden, and there's a crazy malevolent spirit out to destroy Lenzi once and for all.

This story is super good. I love Lenzi. She handles learning of her past the way anyone would. She also handles the creepy stalker Alden the way I would. Run away first, ask questions later. Of course the books later events kind of go against that but still. She's impulsive and is never really sure what she wants or doesn't want.

I feel bad for Zak. There was a lesson in what happened with him. I'm glad it turned out the way it did. As for Alden and Lenzi, they are made for each other. I'm pleased with the result and wish there could be more I could read.

Although this isn't a standalone novel, the next book seems to be with different characters so you can rest assured that the ending of this book is complete with no cliff hangers. This story is frightening, haunting, beautiful, psychotic, hopeful and lovely. I'd love to read it again. 5 stars.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My immediate thoughts… “Ahhh, another week, another awesome review.”
First thing that jumped out to me about this book is…damn! This main character Lenzi sure has a lot on her plate. By the way, I love that name, or rather I really like the spelling of her name; yeah I think that’s more accurate. It reminds me of a friend I have, her name is Robyn. I’m not too crazy about girls name Robin, probably has something to do with Robin from Batman and Robin; I think of it more as a name for a guy, but something about that “y” that just makes me love it…yeah I know that was really random…sorry, LOL.

Any who, I feel like this chick is dealing with a lot; especially being only in high school. Her father commits suicide, she learns that she has this strange and tormenting gift to speak to dead people’s souls, and of course throw in a teen aged angst-y-fied love triangle to really spice things up. Off the bat it seems like a good read. I use to be all about the action, adventure, and the supernatural fantasy thing; having made no bones about my inexperience with books to begin with, if you can think back to my other comments, it’s no wonder I was definitely more of a action hero comic guy growing up. Now though, I find myself really connecting with and enjoying books where the characters are dealing with their emotions and some heavier psychological stuff, a lot more than I did in the past. I’ll make no bone about this either…I was definitely a late bloomer, so now I’m kind of craving these kinds of stories, because I really like connecting with, and relating to its characters. All that being said this seems like something I might really enjoy reading. Lastly, I want to note I appreciate you breaking the characters down a bit more in this review and giving your personal insight into how you feel about them, thanks. I’ll definitely be putting this one on my potential read list.

-YSA

Hyacinth Marius said...

I started to read this book and was sucked into it from the beginning. I love how history was sewn into the story line. i highly recommend this book.
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