Shattered Promises by Jessica Sorensen

Shattered Promises #1

     "For twenty-one-year-old Gemma, life has never been normal. She knows nothing about her past and has been haunted by the same monsters in her nightmares for the last few months. Unemotional and numb to life, she feels disconnected from everyone. Until the very first day she cries. After that, nothing in her life is the same. 

Her emotions slowly surface and she starts experiencing love, happiness, and anger, feelings she never knew existed. But they leave her confused and she doesn’t know whether to embrace them or run away from them.

     Her life only gets more complicated when she meets Alex. Sexy, arrogant, and secretive, Alex can get under Gemma’s skin like no one can. Yet she’s drawn to him by an invisible connection she has no control over. She’s also seen him before. In her nightmares. 

Every part of Gemma’s mind is screaming at her to stay away from Alex, but every other part of her is begging to get close to him. But the closer she gets, the more she realizes Alex knows more about her than he originally let on.

     As secrets about her past unravel, Gemma’s life becomes threatened. She needs to figure out what’s going on, before she winds up dead. But the only person she can turn to for answers is the one person she isn’t sure she can trust."

This is the first book in Sorensen's adult version of her Fallen Star series. This is a review for a re-read this book. After I read the sequel, which I enjoyed immensely, I felt the need to re-read this book, because the first time around, I didn't like it as much as I wanted to. Some of the characters felt weird and flat. But the reason why was because I was trying too hard to envision what I would do with the characters in the story rather than just reading the damn book. I liked the concept of a girl without the ability to feel emotion for 20 years, suddenly feeling them, and what that could do to a person.

Gemma is an interesting character. And it makes sense in a way that the primary emotion she feels after she starts to, is anger. The people who raised her along with everybody else she encountered through her life treated her badly. But it was mainly the ones who raised her treating her like they didn't want her around that brings the most cause to feel angry. It also makes sense that the other major emotion she starts to feel is lust, after meeting Alex and Laylen. Two very attractive men who both seem to know her in a way showing interest in her. I'm making this book sounds too much like a sex filled plotless story, and my first read through that is what I thought it was.

Alex, he is a rather mysterious character, he is a Keeper, kind of a guardian of sorts. There is clearly more going on in his mind than we know about at first. And not all is discovered in this book. His final role in this story is still yet to be seen. And his secret connection to Gemma is intriguing. He is definitely battling some inner demons. There is a sort of secondary character, Alex's sister, Aislen. She's a witch, and while she helps out a lot in the story, so far she hasn't really done anything that shows her importance in the book. She mostly uses her magic to transport them.

Now, on to Laylen. He's a vampire, and possibly the sexiest vampire in literature. And the way he became a Vampire is also rather mysterious. And becoming one has made him an outcast among the Keepers. Being a Keeper-turned-Vampire has made him untrustworthy to his former brethren, which has made him understandably a little bitter towards them. And where Alex lied to Gemma about knowing her from childhood, Laylen tells her they used to be friends, and remembers her quite well.

While the group runs from death walkers and try desperately to keep Gemma, the star hidden in her body, Gemma deals with what it's like to have emotions, and her unexplained attraction and draw to Alex. All the lies and secrets she kept from her makes her not want to trust him, but she is physically drawn to him and while her mind keeps telling him no, her body keeps saying yes. Makes for a number of steamy scenes in this book that I'm glad I gave a second chance to. The re-read review for the sequel will be up at a later date.