Shattered [Hardcover]

 

 

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Karen Robards is a New York Times best selling author with over thirty books to her credit. I had never read Robards before Shattered.

Little Marisa Garcia is afraid of the woods near her new home. She knows there are shadow people hiding there - and they're watching her.....and she's right.

Fast forward thirty years. Lisa Grant has been assigned to work cold cases for Scott Buchanan, the District Attorney. While going through the file of a family gone missing - the Garcias - Lisa is stunned by a photo in the file. The mother of the family is a dead ringer for herself. As Lisa follows up with the case, it seems that someone is just as determined that she won't. Complicating things further are her feelings for Scott - their pasts are intertwined -will their future be as well?

Now having never read Robards before I had no idea of her writing style. For those who love romantic suspense, I would say - put her to the top of your list. She skillfully combines romantic tension with an interesting plot. I was happily ensconced on my couch for the day with a wicked head cold and was quite happy reading steamy scenes and smoldering glances. The mystery is really not the main thrust of the plot, more the vehicle to carry the relationship between Lisa and Scott.

I do prefer my mysteries a bit more convoluted, if you will. I did have the plot figured out before the end. The 'bad guys' are easily identified, as are the red herrings. But it was a thoroughly entertaining read for the day.

Fans of Sandra Brown, Linda Howard or Julie Garwood would enjoy Karen Robards.

I've been reading Karen Robards for at least 20 years and she's always been an auto-buy author for me. You can count on her to deliver a great romantic suspense read.

Shattered delivered on both counts, but not without a few issues.

One issue I have to mention right up front (doesn't really have anything to do with the storyline). Both the author's website and Goodreads list the heroine's name as Lisa Shewmaker when in fact her name in the book is Lisa Grant. How does that happen?

On the romance front Scott and Lisa have history in spades. Lisa has been in love with Scott ever since she was a teenager, a spoiled, rich little heiress, prancing around in her tight clothes and skimpy bathing suits trying to attract the attention of the cute, slightly older, hired help. Scott knows trouble(and jailbait)when he sees it and manages to keep his teenage hormones in check and resist the little princess.

Fast forward ten years and a reversal of fortune has brought a jobless Lisa back to the home she grew up in to care for her ailing mother. And right back into Scott's life. Now he's the Boss, a respected District Attorney and she's come to him begging for a job.

You can sense right from page 3 of the 1st chapter that there is going to be some serious fireworks between these two when Scott threatens to fire Lisa for being late for work one day. It doesn't help that Scott just happens to witness Lisa being dropped off by her boyfriend or the extended lip lock in the parking lot before "loverboy" drives away. Jealous much?

Scott and Lisa have been fighting their feelings for each other for a long time. The sexual tension and chemistry between them is hot, unfortunately Scott has a strict policy against dating co-workers, but you know what they say about rules being made to be broken? Hey he did hold out for over half the book, which by the way was just too long in my opinion, but it kept me reading waiting for the payoff.

As for the suspense aspect, the beginning flashback chapter set the stage for the action that was to come. It doesn't take long to figure out where the story is headed and the title Shattered is a dead giveaway. Lisa was like a cat with nine lives as more than one attempt was made on her life as she tried to solve a decades old cold case. Even though I was sure about the ending, Robards did throw a few wrinkles in before reaching the final conclusion that I didn't see coming so the ending was not as obvious as I thought it was going to be.

Speaking of the ending, it was way, way, way to rushed. It was almost as if the author realized she'd reached her word count and wanted to tie everything up in a nice neat little bow in the last 10 pages. All the questions got answered, but I really felt cheated.

Overall it was a good, solid read. Really more like 3 1/2 stars for me.

Lisa is a stressed woman. Her mother has Lou Gehrig's disease and is close to her final moments on Earth. Because of this and other financial problems she has to beg for a job she's overqualified for from a man she once treated as somewhat of a teenage whipping boy. When he sends her to do a thankless job, she stumbles upon the evidence of a strange disappearance case. The woman on the photos looks just like her, and the little girl looks very much like what Lisa as a young girl looked like.

Overall this was a good (not excellent) romantic suspense. Karen Robards has her style that (a combination of romantic blended with earthiness) addresses familiar themes (identity, trust issues, fear of commitment) that are present in various degrees in this book. It was a more realistic kind of suspense than some of her recent books (ie Obsession and Bait for instance) with less suspension of disbelief required and maybe a more visceral suspense because it hits closer to home. My main critic though is that it's neither a strong suspense book nor a strong romance. There are elements of both but it doesn't shine as either.

The weak part of the book where I'm concerned is the plot. It's very greedy with details first, it unfolds really quickly at the end, there aren't many trails given to us to meander on. There is only one red herring, and it's not presented very convincingly. When the solution to the puzzle come, it is disappointing to find that the villainous motivations aren't the most credible. It certainly isn't the best of plots, but there is enough that happens to keep the reader moving towards the conclusion.

The reason I thought the book did not really do better in the romance genre is that even though the characters are interesting and their motivations are established, you kind of have to believe the narration on it. I liked that the sexual attraction had simmered for a long time between the hero and the heroine but we are told these two have been attracted forever, but never really why, which kind of chalks it up to chemistry. I find that it doesn't really filter on the page, I like to be shown concrete reasons of why people are attracted, and why the attraction doesn't fizzle after years out of contact. One of the things that I didn't like as much was that the emotional conflict goes from "this is Scott who I have been attracted to as a teenager but who kept turning me down, and who is now my boss and keeps putting me down" to "ah hell, I might as well jump his bones". There are scenes more romantic than this in the book, but I thought the romantic emotions were shoved under the rug too often. Something else that annoyed me is when the author shortcuts a description like this (I paraphrase slightly): "She was woman enough to see desire in his eyes." What makes Lisa think that? Show me, or at least tell me, don't ellipse on the good stuff, this is why we're reading romances instead of going out in bars!

At the beginning of the book, there is a slight mistake, Lisa is referred to as Beth, so editorial choices seem to have been made late in the process, and quality control seems to have overlooked this. Another pet peeve is that Lisa's mother has a serious condition described as ALS. It's only written once, always abbreviated, and never actually spelled out as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease). I find this very lazy, if you're going to use a disease and name it in a book, you should make sure a reasonably well read reader doesn't have to google it to know what it is. It's not really a big annoyment, but it's sloppy. There's about a thousand books who do better.

Still a good read, fans of Robards will enjoy and there is a good chance a first time reader would not be put off reading the author's other works.

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