Author: Allison Brennan
Book Name: Shattered
Release Date: August 22, 2017
Series: Max Revere
Order: #4
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Crime
Overall SPA: 3.5 Stars
Blurb: Over a span of twenty years, four boys have been kidnapped from their bedrooms, suffocated, and buried nearby in a shallow grave. Serial killer or coincidence?
That’s the question investigative reporter Maxine Revere sets out to answer when an old friend begs her to help exonerate his wife, who has been charged with their son’s recent murder. But Max can do little to help because the police and D.A. won’t talk to her—they think they have the right woman. Instead, Max turns her attention to three similar cold cases. If she can solve them, she might be able to help her friend.
Justin Stanton was killed twenty years ago, and his father wants closure—so he is willing to help Max with her investigation on one condition: that she work with his former sister-in-law— Justin’s aunt, FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid. Trouble is, Max works alone, and she’s livid that her only access to the case files, lead detective and witnesses depends on her partnering with a federal agent on vacation. She wants the career-making story almost as much as the truth—but if she gets this wrong, she could lose everything.
Haunted by Justin’s death for years, Lucy yearns to give her family—and herself—the closure they need. More important, she wants to catch a killer. Lucy finds Max’s theory on all three cases compelling—with Max’s research added to Lucy’s training and experience, Lucy believes they can find the killer so justice can finally be served. But the very private Lucy doesn’t trust the reporter any more than Max trusts her.
Max and Lucy must find a way to work together to untangle lies, misinformation, and evidence to develop a profile of the killer. But the biggest question is: why were these boys targeted? As they team up to find out what really happened the night Justin was killed, they make a shocking discovery: Justin’s killer is still out there … stalking another victim … and they already may be too late.
Main SPA Evaluation Areas:
Characters: 3.5/5 Stars
Believability: 3/5 Stars
Series Expectations: 3.5/5 Stars
Personal Opinion: 3.5/5 Stars
I had a few issues with this book in comparison to the other books in this series. My first and biggest issue was the fact that this really isn’t a Max Revere story. It is so much more a Lucy Kincaid book, which is a different series by the same author, and one I haven’t read.
It was probably meant to be something of a crossover between the two series, which I may have enjoyed, but this didn’t even give an equal split, or something even resembling that, as far as page time between Max and Lucy. It only gives lip service to any kind of actual partnership. This is the Lucy show. So much so, that Max is rendered nearly useless and placed in the role of a background character. There was so much Lucy on the page, you get massive amounts of background information about her all through this story. Some of those pieces are potentially even spoilers for that other series, so if you haven’t read any of those books, this one could be problematic.
This may not have been a huge issue for me, but the characters are VERY different. I enjoy the Max Revere books for a reason and there was very little of those reasons in this one because you saw so little of her. One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed those books is because she has always come across as realistic and human. They are also a slightly different view and take on a classic crime drama because she is an investigate reporter, rather than in law enforcement. Lucy on the other hand, along with her entire, massive brood of a family, border on the nearly super human with their brilliance and skills, and fall all over the map of the law enforcement range. The introduction to her and her family pushed all kinds of believability buttons for me, which, until this book, really hadn’t been an issue.
If I could push past that and look at just the story outside of the Lucy piece, this was still a good book and I really enjoyed those pieces of it. I can’t say that it did anything at all for me as far as encouraging me to pick up any of the books from the Lucy Kincaid series. I am a little curious about all the little bits that get dangled in front of you in this book, but I can pretty much tell before I ever pick up a book that I will be constantly battling that believability wall and will have a hard time liking them.
I will still be picking up the next book in this series, but I really hope that this isn’t any indication that it is going to go a similar route to what I can see with the other series.
TJ Fox: Sharing the Experience 