Shattered
by Janet Nissenson
Inevitable #3
Publication Date: May 5, 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
The Ghost
Angela Del Carlo has been living half a life, ever since he walked out on her, shattering her entire existence and leaving her to cope with picking up the fragments. Nothing seems to matter much anymore, and her life is a drab existence of work, run, repeat. She’s forgotten how to laugh, how to love, and even how to live. Most days she’s little more than a ghost.
The Devil
Nick Manning’s life has been one lived without compromise, without rules, and without regrets. Except for his one weakness, his one regret – Angela. What he did to her still tugs at his conscience, still fills him with remorse, and continues to haunt his dreams. But he stays away, knowing that he can never be the man she needs or give her what she deserves.
The Angel
But when fate intervenes and Angela’s and Nick’s paths cross again, she’s determined not to surrender her soul to the devil ever again, while he’s desperate to have his angel back in his arms – even if it means changing the rules to get it done.
About Janet Nissenson
Janet is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, and currently resides on the northern California coast with her husband Steve and Golden Retriever Max. She worked for more than two decades in the financial services industry before turning her focus to producing running events. She is a former long-distance runner, current avid yoga practitioner, is addicted to Pinterest, likes to travel and read. She has been writing for more than three decades but Serendipity is her first official published work. She plans five more books in the Inevitable series, with each one a standalone with new lead characters, so no cliffhangers or waiting months to see what happens next!
I have absolutely loved this series so far and Shattered has once again blown me away. We have met Angela previously in this series and she has been a character I have been really intrigued by. Something in her life has obviously “shattered” her and caused her to live life as a shell of a person. Rather than living, she is just simply existing and this book gives you her story. We have met her as the miserable friend of both Julia and her twin sister Lauren and her constant state of being on autopilot and not having fun has featured heavily in their lives.
As the run up to this novel, we see her changing in the novella All You Need is Love when she meets a new man in her life. I love how the glimpses we have seen of her in the other books in the series have been retold from her point of view! It has tied the characters together brilliantly.
So we know that Angela is broken but until we have her side of the story, we don’t realise just how broken she is and how this has happened. It is evident that someone broke her heart, well more than broke it. They shattered it. And when she finally begins to pull herself round and tries living life again, the heartbreak rears its ugly head again when Nick reappears in her life.
The dual perspective of the book really gives you a chance to get to know the characters and much as I really wanted to hate Nick, I could see he is also dealing with his own kind of demons that he needs to exorcise.
One great telling point for me was the way that the book is split into three parts, one dealing with the past, the present and Nick’s perspective of the future. You get to see how this relation ship originally developed and then splintered followed by Angela’s years of heartache and then Nick’s attempts to make things right.
I won’t go into details of how why or when but needled to say this is a slightly more dark tale of romance (if you can call it that, especially to begin with) and a fantastic journey of two souls who both have their individual issues to deal with. The characters are both equally well developed and I really loved the fact that although there are many walls between them, you can feel the connection they have every time they are together. Despite what the characters may say, the prose around their dialogue and their individual perspectives frustrate you but also endear you to their path to being together.
I have loved every book in this series and this is no exception. Five Shattered stars from me and I am waiting in anticipation for Lauren’s story. This is another thread to the series that definitely needs closure for me!
