(Cover picture courtesy of Functioning Insanity.)

After being kidnapped, hogtied, and stuffed in the trunk of a car, seventeen-year-old Abigail Nichols’ boy problems seem unimportant.
She couldn’t be more wrong.

The boy who saves her holds her heart.

But Derick Crawford also holds secrets.

Magical beings who guide human emotions are fighting an invisible war dating back to the dawn of time, and Abigail’s one of them. The more she learns of her heritage, the less she wants to know. Armed with a very old, very massive book to teach them about their history, Abigail and Derick run away to a place where they think they can be safe and happy, only to have their troubles secretly hitch a ride.

Her history book is in a sharing mood, and it tells her to keep a secret of her own.

But has she put her trust in the wrong place?

And will the world survive if she has?

[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

Way back I reviewed Krystal Wade’s debut trilogy Darkness Falls.  I fell in love with her style of writing and have been eagerly awaiting her next work.  Shattered Secrets didn’t really sound like what I’d normally pick up but since I enjoyed her previous work I requested it on NetGalley anyway.  The world-building was just as good, the characters were reasonably well fleshed-out and the plot was very fast-paced but in the end I just didn’t like this one as much.  It’s still good, mind you.  But it’s not as good as the first series.

My only real ‘problem’ with the story was Abigail, the narrator.  She’s rather naive and constantly screwing up her own life.  She tends to run headfirst into danger and although she can be intelligent at times (observing her surroundings when she was kidnapped) there are times I wanted to slap her.  To be fair she does get better as the book progresses but because of her early behaviour I wasn’t quite able to connect as well emotionally.  I wasn’t a huge fan of either male lead or the love triangle but at least both characters were well fleshed-out.  The love triangle is generally well done but I would have liked to see something different.

The plot was incredibly fast-paced, though.  There were twists and turns around every corner as more and more information was revealed.  What is Abigail really?  And how can she stop an impending apocalypse when everyone is telling her to do something different?  There are a fair amount of subplots that add tension to the main plot but it never really gets confusing.  That’s good because if it was confusing you’d be totally lost by the time you got to the end of the book.

Since most of the book is about Derick and Abigail discovering who they are I can’t give a solid judgment on the world-building but so far it’s really good.  Krystal Wade has actually thought up some unique ideas for her magical beings and mixed them in with existing ideas to create the type of rich fantasy world I’ve come to expect from her.  You really can’t fault her world-building.

All in all, this book was pretty good.  I’m definitely interested to see what happens next in the Book of Red series.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

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