Shadows by Paula Weston

The Rephaim #1

"It's almost a year since Gaby Winters watched her twin brother die. In the sunshine of a new town, her body has healed, but her grief is raw and constant. It doesn't help that every night in her dreams she fights and kills hell-beasts. And then Rafa comes to town. Not only does he look exactly like the guy who's been appearing in Gaby's dreams, he tells her things about her brother and her life that cannot be true, things that are dangerous. Who is Rafa? Who are the Rephaim? And who is Gaby? The truth lies in the shadows of her nightmares."

I won this book from a Goodreads giveaway. Reading the summary, the book sounded very interesting and engaging. But when I started reading the book, all I got was a pretty bland start. It still drew me in enough for me to continue reading, but for the most part, I didn't care for the beginning of the book. At about chapter two or three (the chapters were really short, like 3-5 pages) it started to pick up. And I was able to finish the book in just a couple hours. In the end, it was an okay book, I liked it enough to want to finish the series.

About the characters in general. I don't really know how to feel about Gaby at this point. She comes off as being slightly bipolar. That may be from what happened to her, or bad character developing. I'm hoping that more will be revealed about who exactly she was, and how Rafael, or Rafa as he goes by, fits into her old life. And why she's supposed to hate him, also if she does hate him why she's so willing to throw herself at him. I didn't care for Maggie's character very much either. Rafa is the only character that I really liked in that book. Some of the characters, their purpose was unclear. So, right now all the character's need some work or some serious development in the next book.

The story as a whole wasn't bad, there wasn't really anything that was a 'wow' factor about the story. It was, at times, a little predictable. But the story time line was way too short. Everything that happened happened over the course of like 3 days. And for someone who believed they were a human their whole life and was still recovering from a trauma. She took it all way too well for it to make sense. There was zero freaking out on her part when there should have been. I still did like the book enough to finish it, I just hope that the sequel gives us more information on Gaby before her accident, and gives us more character development for everybody.