Grab Your Edition Shattered Blue Narrated By Jane Taylor Starwood Disseminated As Volume
Blue: A Romantic Thriller by Jane Taylor Starwood
Publication Date: March,
ed by: Reading In Pajamas/ Cori
Rated:,Stars
REVIEW:
I loved Shattered Blue! Jane Taylor Starwood's debut novel is a heartlurching, pageturning, romantic suspense that kept me captivated! It has everything I look for in a great romantic suspense book.
Plenty of danger, mystery, and steamy romance, Shattered Blue also has an intriguing plot with great characters, Matt Brennan is the perfect man in my opinion and Shane is a really likable female lead that is working to face the monsters of her past.
I really enjoyed how they came together and the banter between them, Matt has an instant attraction with Shane, and Shane needs some convincing and boy does he set out to convince her! There is lots of steamy romance and passion between them.
I highly recommend this book for all romantic suspense lovers! Jane Taylor Starwood is an author to watch and I can not wait to see what she comes up with next!
copy was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
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Twitter: readingpajamas Awesome Indies Book Awards is pleased to include SHATTERED BLUE by JANE TAYLOR STARWOOD in the library of Awesome Indies' Badge of Approvalrecipients.
Original Awesome Indies' Assessmentstars:
Shattered Blue is a classic romantic suspense story, and if you like that combination of genres, then youll probably like this because it has all the necessary elements an attractive woman, a hot guy and a psychopathic wouldbe rapist killer.
Just when said hot guy and attractive woman get together, the psychopath enters and threatens to rip their happiness from beneath them,
The tension builds through memories, dreams, clever foreshadowing and a series of suspicious events that culminate in a life threatening situation for both lovers, The pacing is good, it keeps you reading but still allows time for character development, and the plot, though nothing new, is solid,
The characters are welldrawn and complex, Shane is an artist with a history she is hiding from, and Matt is an architect in the process of selling his business to his hard nosed exwife.
Despite many reasons not to, they fall in love pretty much instantaneously, It surprises them both, but theyre old enough to know not to fight it, Cynical reviewers may find this a little twee, but its perfect for the genre, I got to know Shane very quickly, fell in love with Matt before she did and cared about them both enough to really not want the bad guy to screw it all up, but fiction requires drama and thats what we got.
I wont tell you what happened in the end, except to say that I thought it well done, Aspects of it were somewhat predictable, but thats a hallmark of the romance genre, so its not a problem as far as Im concerned,
The book has a couple of underlying themes worth noting: the affect of childhood abuse on adults and the healing power of love, Love as healing is a theme that always leaves you warm and fuzzy, even without the steamy sex, and in this case it balances the evil very nicely.
This is quite the enjoyable and impressive debut novel!
Read full review in the sitelinkMay issue of InDtale Magazine, I WAS PLESANTLY SURPRISED WITH THE ROMANCE AND THRILLER COMBINATION, THE ROMANCE WAS VERY SEXXY AND HOT, THE THRILLER PART JUST KEPT COMING AT YA', IT WAS RELENTLESS, JUST WHEN I THOUGHT THE END WAS CLOSE, I CHECKED THE PERCENTAGE I WAS AT AND SAID, "IT AIN'T OVER YET, TOO SOON", THE TERROR ROLLED ON, AND ON, WHEW! THE MAIN CHARACTERS WERE WELL DEVELOPED, I LOVED WATCHING MATT amp SHANE FALL IN LOVE, IT WAS SIZZLING, SWEET AND HOT.
I LIKE BOTH LOVE, MURDER AND EROTICA GENRE THIS HAD THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF EVERYTHING ALL ROLLED INTO ONE BOOK, YEP! D Shattered Blue by Jane Taylor Starwood is aindependent/self published release, I was provided a copy of this book by the author in exchange for an honest review,
Shannon is living out away from most of civilization with only one close friend in town, no family, husband or kids, Why Well, her step father recently died in prison after pulling a con with his son that took money from many innocent people, Shannon changed her name to Shane and left her life in New York and started over, When she gets a new neighbor, Matt, she's less than thrilled, no matter how nice looking he is,
Hiding from her family's sins is not all Shane has to contend with, She still suffers from a childhood trauma and recently she has been getting some hang up type calls that has her concerned, A neighbor that insist on being, well, neighborly is a complication she would rather do without,
Matt is selling his portion of a business that has left him with few money concerns, He is getting a divorce and living a slower paced lifestyle than he had in LA, He learns that his neighbor is not too happy about the two of them sharing a hill, so he decides to introduce himself, He is totally blown away by Shane, She was rude, but Matt is determined to show her he is no threat to her peace of mind and that maybe he's one of the good guys.
I really enjoyed this classic style romantic suspense novel that reminds me just a little of Linda Howard or Sandra Brown, If you their style, you will really like this book, Shane's/ Shannon's dark secrets and family crimes have put her in serious danger, When Matt gets involved with Shane, he too becomes a target when the bad guys realize they will need to get him out of the way in order to get to Shane.
There are many twist and turns , high intensity suspense and steamy romance, Shannon will learn to trust, to heal , and she will learn the power of friendship, community and love,
I seems like there are only a handful of RS authors out there still giving us this type of thrilling suspense, Mostly these are authors that have carved out a niche for themselves with this formula and it is their bread and butter, There aren't many new authors writing RS like this, though, I like a good action romance book with hot military heroes as much as the next person, but I miss the standard RS format, I hope this book and this author will help bring this style of writing back into the mainstream, This was a wild rollercoaster ride,Great book! It had a good love story and a slowly developing suspense, I could almost hear the "du du du dum dum" of the music in a suspense film, The pace of the book was great, I loved that the author describes the scenery without going into excess of details, likewise with the characters, Their feelings and thoughts are portrayed convincingly without pages and repetition of the same, Jordan as the villain was convincingly scary and psycho and Matt and Shane were great as a couple, Shane MacKinnon used to be somebody else, Hounded by scandal and haunted by a shameful secret, wealthy, privileged Shannon Malone fled Manhattan and took on a new identity,
Five years later, shes finally met a man who loves her in spite of her troubled past, Hes leading her into a world of sensual pleasure she never imagined,
Now a menacing whisper on the phone threatens to shatter her new life, Someone thinks she has the missing millions from a massive investment scam, Someone who also has a far more sinister reason to come after her,
Shane thought the monster who tormented her childhood was dead, She was wrong. And now that hes found her again, hell stop at nothing to finish his sadistic game, What an unexpected, fantastic read, Suspenseful, surprising, warm, romantic, and very wellwritten, I have to take half a star away for the abrupt ending, So.from me. Give it a tryyou can't go wrong. I loved this book. There is a good balance betwwen romance and suspense, Just when you think the exciting part is over and that the remaining several pages will be romance, the story adds a twist that will keep you reading until the end.
Shattered Blue had a great balance between the romance and suspence aspects of the storyline, Shane and Matt have a love at first sight kind of romance, Well, I take that back, It was lust at first sight for Matt, but annoyance at first sight for Shane, I love Shane and the fact that she gave Matt so much trouble at the beginning of their romance, She did not like the fact that he was building a house near her and she let him know it, Matt didn't relentless in his pursuit for Shane, He pushed back until she gave in to her true feelings, She pushed him away and he followed, Matt is my new ideal book boyfriend, swoon The man is perfect, He cooked for her. He cleaned for her. Hell, he rubbed her feet, Why does he not have a brother Although it is an "instalove," the romance develops over the majority of the book, They don't just jump into bed on chapter two, The author does a fantastic buildup towards that night and it is a big moment in Shane's life, You can tell that she begins to heal from her traumatic childhood from that point on,
The other side of the book is an erie story of one sick dude, Seriously, Jordan gave me the heebee jeebees, The buildup towards the climax of the story was slow and steady, I felt the ending could have used an extra page or two to expand on the "final battle" just because I wanted Jordan to feel a bit more pain.
Other than that, nothing in the story was rushed, It started off by Shane getting subtle clues that she's being watched trampled grass, items being moved, etc and leads to one hell of a showdown between her and her lovely exstepbrother.
The way he says "sister", . . shudders. Points for Shane for kicking ass, Both Shane and Matt fight Jordan together and they take turns protecting each other,
I loved everything about this book, The characters, both main characters and secondary characters, were well written, The story had a lot of light hearted moments especially with Deputy Ralph and his mom, The story also had extremely dark moments, I would want more from Shane and Matt, but I really think they deserve a happy ending after everything they went through,
This is my first book by the author, but it definitely won't be the last,
This book was won through Goodreads giveaways,
Overall I liked this book, The only thing that bothered me was the ending, It was . repetitive. The main character, Shane, is attacked by her crazy stepbrother, Jordan, She gets away though and believes he is dead, However, he isn't dead, attacks her again, and once more she gets away thinking that she has killed him, But, once more he comes back only to attack Matt, the hero, and once again Shane attacks him and thinks she has killed him, Surprise! Surprise! He's not dead, so Matt goes over and finally finishes the job, Ugh! I was half expecting Jordan to come back again,
I have to say that I found this repetition a little irritating, Aside from that though, the story was interesting, I would be willing to read more from this author, My out ofstars,
Shattered Blue, a debut novel by Jane Taylor Starwood, is billed as a romantic thriller, It tries valiantly to be both and the result is a work where the reader is reading a romance in the first twothirds of the book and a thriller in latter third.
Shattered Blue tells the story of Shane MacKinnon, an artist living in a remote location in the mountains of New Mexico, Shane used to be known as Shannon Malone and has changed her identity due to scandal and a haunted past, In the opening pages of the book, we meet Shane five years after the scandal that forces her to change her identity, Enter Matthew Brennan, her new neighbour, building a house all by himself and out of straw bales no less that is ruining Shane's pristine view of the hills.
And so begins the relationship between Shane and Matt, Determined to dislike her new neighbour, Shane falls hopelessly in love at first sight with Matt, and Matt with Shane,
Enter the complications namely a stalker: Jordan Ripley, Shane's older halfbrother who Shane believes is dead, This is one of the reasons I had a huge problem with the plausibility of this story, I found Jordan's backstory to be lacking we are just given the bare bones, He sexually abuses his sister for years because his father remarried and he's jealous of her People just believed he was dead even though they never found a body His character was evil but I found as a villain he was a rather flat, stereotype doing the typical stalkerish things heavy breathing on the phonecheck, items moved around that makes the victim wonder if she's imagining thingscheck.
As for the love story between Matt and Shane well, who wouldn't fall in love with Matt He's nauseatingly perfect: goodlooking, charming, wellmannered, thoughtful, considerate, rich, has a good career, is kind to pets and small children, does charity work, cooks, cleans the list goes on and on.
There are a few skeletons in his closet, but hey, none of them affect him badly in any way! Reason number two not believable, And Shane, well, she's a bit of a wreck given her past, But Matt sees past it, loves her for who she is and of course, heals all her past wounds, Reason number threenot believable. As a reader, I felt the author was a little heavyhanded with the whole love at first sight bit it seemed to be mentioned repeatedly, I had a few more reasons listed why I didn't find the whole story plausible, but I'll leave that for other readers to discover for themselves,
On the plus side, the writing was good overall, The fact that the author has worked as an editor shows, But the plot began to drag for me about halfway through the book, And as for the thriller part: well, there were a couple of plot twists but nothing that made me think, "Wow, I never saw that coming!"
Overall, a quick read for those who like romantic suspense and are willing to sacrifice plausibility for the
sake of a story.
Not a book I was crazy about, but I'm sure there are people out there who will enjoy this tale,
This book was provided to me courtesy of the author through Goodreads First Reads in exchange for an honest review,
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