Amber Vant

Shattered princess by Amber Vant

NetGalley provided a copy from this book in exchange for an honest review

Dear author, I tried really hard to enjoy your book. Believe me, I did. But in the end, I just felt underwhelmed by it. I expected so much more than what I read.

Everyone knows I'm a huge fan of broken assholes, who have a weak place for the heroine. And I certainly love bully romances, but this book just disappointed me.

Let's start with the story.

Rora (shortened from Aurora) is our heroine, who is back at her father's house ( -) 6 years after she was kicked out of there. She has to be patient with her bully younger brother, and his friends. And to take all they throw at her, till she turns 18.

I don't judge the lack of originality, cause god knows how much I love my stories similar.

During this period she finds a friend - Hailey, starts dating Xavier, and reignites old rivalry with Cole. The secret is that she and Cole have an incredible passion, and can't stay apart from each other. They are either fighting or kissing, nothing in-between.

And Cole is one of her bullies, from the group of her brother.

NEXT PART MIGHT INCLUDE SPOILERS, please read at your own risk!

Now I have a bit of criticism.

At the beginning of the book, I loved the writing - the descriptions and the dialogues, but as the book proceed (I think) they got worse. There were more and more grammar mistakes and a few lexical. So the books need a MAJOR EDIT (it's shocking to see in a book that's going to be published, mistakes like your and you're, and there, and their). I encountered and a few typos, which can be fixed fastly with an EDIT (for example the word beat was written as best). Also in a few sentences sounded like the author forgot in which tense she was writing so she mixed present and past.

Apart from that, I had really big problems reading at the beginning of the book, cause scenes were just jumping from one to the other, no flow, no explanations, not even separated as different chapters. We have mornings, and the next sentence is talking about the after-school activity. This really bugged me. I wouldn't have had a problem with it if the scenes were part of different chapters, but they were not. So this might also need to be reviewed.

I kind of felt the drama in the book was artificial, and not at all-natural. Like there was drama, only because there had to be drama, not because it was what naturally followed in the story. This came really strong at the dinner scene where Silas told Cole this was the last year of the ball. It came out of nowhere and at this time of the book was a bit unnecessary (It would have been better if it was pushed with a few chapters).

Another thing that made me cringe was the "Iceman" thing. Especially, when Cole was about to hit Xavier (I think), and she said something along the lines "Iceman, stop". Mentally I facepalmed. And the main thing was that they weren't even that close at the time, and she called him that in front of the whole school.

Let's go back a little and remember the scene with the car on the first day of school. Did I miss anything? Was I blind? Cause I read the scene twice and I still couldn't understand what was happening. And then at around 75% of the book, I learn that she dumped paint all over the vehicle. How did I miss that? How did she do it? Wasn't she supposed to be in class?

Then a few scenes later we are at this lake house party, and her brother trashes her car... Okay. The car disappears. But her father never asks her what happened with it. We then go to chapter 52 and learn that her dad drives her to school one morning, cause she can't do it herself. Again no one says anything about the car. What if she crashed, would he care more? SMH.

And the last scene I had a problem with was when Cole and Rory were finally going to fuck. Great! I waited too long for that. And bam, ruined. The whole sex thing flew out of the window when the unrealism stepped in. So he licks her nips and she comes from that? I don't say that this is impossible, but definitely not every woman can do it.

Now about the characters and the relationships:

Rory - I think she was naive in her own way. One would never guess she was assaulted as a child, cause the assault usually leaves marks (from inside or outside), and she hadn't shown any signs of what had happened. She was nice to her friends, and wasn't bowing in front of the enemies.

I felt Cole was a combination of other heroes I've read about - Damon Torrance (Killswitch, Penelope Douglas), and Saint Memphis (from KOQ). A broken hero who considers himself a monster, terrorizing the girl he likes (maybe in him can be found a bit of Carter from Untouchable, as well).

Again I felt the relationship between them in a way rushed, and unnatural. And the only one that felt natural (even if it was a bit unreal) was Aurora's and Hailey's.

In the end, the plot twist was not that surprising, but it left us wanting the second book (which comes out this August).

I have to say, that I didn't get into the book, but don't let that stop you from reading it, cause you may like it.

I hope I haven't hurt anyone (the author) with the review, cause I tried to give only constructive criticism.… (meer)