Happy Saturday y’all! The book I’m sharing with you today came out late last month and somehow I missed the release day 🤦🏼♀️I had the opportunity to beta read this book over the Summer and I’ve been dying to share it with you since. If you are a fan of the series, you will be happy with the ending, even if you aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to the characters. If you haven’t started the series yet, enjoy scifi, alien dystopians, and a little romance, I highly recommend you grab a copy of Broken Skies and start a binge read ASAP!
I received this book via the author, Theresa Kay. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of this review.
Shattered Stars by Theresa Kay Series: Broken Skies #3
Published by Self Publish on 2017-10-26
Length: 365 pages
Reviewing eARC Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2017 Dystopia Reading Challenge, 2017 New Release Challenge
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Unexpected allies. Unexpected betrayals. Unexpected abilities.
The last thing Jax Mitchell ever wanted was to be a weapon. Her abilities are unpredictable at best, but with her twin lost, there’s no one else with enough power to take on Jastren and his mental manipulations. She doesn’t have to do it alone, though. Not only can she rely on the unwavering support of Lir, Rym, and her human friends, she also ends up with help from a surprising source.
Meanwhile, her twin brother Jace—his body controlled by Jastren, and the shattered pieces of his mind locked inside—has become a monster. The struggle to hold on to what’s left of his humanity has left him weak and more confused than ever before. Every thought, every impulse, and every memory has the potential to destroy him—and everyone else around him.
The futures of both the humans and the E’rikon are on the line, but as ulterior motives and political machinations are revealed, it becomes clear that the betrayals aren’t restricted to only one species. Can Jax and Lir get everyone to work together in time to prevent the two species from destroying each other? Can Jace find some measure of redemption for all he has done? And will Jax be able to harness her powers… without losing herself in the process?
Shattered Stars is the epic, heart-wrenching conclusion to Theresa Kay‘s Broken Skies trilogy. Picking up where Fractured Suns left off, Jax, Lir, and their friends find themselves at the mercy of what is left of the US government. Please note that if you have NOT read Broken Skies or Fractured Suns that there are spoilers to those books in this review. Read at your own risk from this point on. The story picks up at a fast pace right from page one as Jax and Lir flee her old home and doesn’t slow down. I found that I couldn’t read it fast enough. I needed desperately to know what would happen at each turn of the page right to those final words “the end.” Because of the fast pace, I’m not sure how to summarize this book without giving away spoilers! I’ll just say that the final battle among Lir, Jax, and Jastren is here and it is epic!
Jax has to be one of my all-time favorite heroines. Theresa Kay has written her amazingly well. It’s refreshing, really, to see a character who starts so broken in the first book become the heroine in the end. The growth is tremendous, and as the reader, we get to experience it with her. She’s fierce, snarky, loyal to a fault, and out for blood in this book. Yet she’s also confused. Things she believed to be true aren’t and things she believed false are true. Her world has been turned upside down, and despite it all she comes out stronger for it.
And then there is Jace. So the first book is told exclusively in Jax’s perspective, the second is told from Lir and Jax’s perspectives which made me really fall for the alien boy, and now in this final installment we get Jax and Jace’s perspective. At first, I wasn’t sure how I felt about getting Jace’s POV. To be honest, I was just as angry at him as Jax was and ready to jump through the pages and murder him slowly. Then his first chapter proceeded and my heart broke, like shattered into a thousand pieces that were then stomped on by an angry herd of elephants. From Jax’s perspective, we know that Jace was her rock, her best friend, the only person she loved and the person who kept her sane all those years without their father. She’s built him into this unstoppable force, really she’s idolized him. Then his first chapter begins and as the reader we realize just how wrong she was to do so. This poor broken boy 😭Jastren has destroyed him. He is barely hanging on by a thread, but he knows he has to find Jax, he has to keep her safe, and he has to kill Jastren. I never thought that I’d say this after reading the heartbreaking ending of Fractured Suns but here goes: there is redemption for Jace after all.
All the characters in this series have become vital parts of Jax’s life and I love how the author implies this, showing how they all work together and how they inherently trust one another. Living during what they feel is the end of times does that to people. While Jax grew throughout the series, the other characters did as well, especially my alien boy. Lir starts the series as a headstrong, prejudice alien who only wants to get home. Then the events of the second book broke him. He is now as broken as Jax was in the beginning and seeing him this way is truly heartbreaking. He’s slightly unstable, yet it’s his love for Jax and hers for him that brings peace for Lir. I loved reading as their relationship grew and it culminates in this final installment.
Overall, I truly loved this trilogy! This final book wraps the series up for Jax and Lir in a beautiful way. The nonstop action, the suspense of not-knowing what’s real and what’s not, and Jace, my beautiful broken boy, and the unstoppable bond between Jax and Lir created an epic, heart-stopping ending to the series. If you are a fan of scifi, alien dystopias, and enjoy a little romance AND haven’t started the series yet, grab a copy of Broken Skies (free on all ebook platforms) and start binging today! If you’re a fan of the series, I promise Shattered Stars doesn’t disappoint!
About Theresa Kay
The only person she knows who had a subscription to Writer's Digest at eleven and was always excited to write research papers, Theresa has been putting words to paper since a young age. Living in the mountains of central Virginia with her husband and two kids, she works as a paralegal by day, binges on Netflix at night and finds bits of time in between reading almost everything she can get her hands on and laundry to craft stories that tend to feature broken characters in sci-fi or paranormal worlds, with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure.
She's constantly lost in one fictional universe or another and is a self-proclaimed “fangirl” who loves being sucked in to new books or TV shows. Theresa originally wanted to write horror novels as an ode to her childhood passion for Stephen King novels, but between her internal Muse’s ramblings and the constant praise for her sci-fi pieces from her writer’s group – The Rebel Writers – she knew she should stick with what was working.
I still haven’t written my review…but I concur on all of your thoughts. This series is one of my favourites.
I felt so bad when I realized it was live and had been for a few weeks. Not sure how I missed that! After writing the review I really want to go back and read the whole series again….