Young Adult Review: Fractured by Sarah Fine

Fractured (Guards of the Shadowlands #2) by Sarah Fine

Hardcover, 357 pages

Published: October 29th, 2013 by Skyscape

Source: Publisher

Do not read this description if you haven't read Sanctum yet!

In the week since Lela returned to Rhode Island as Captain of the Guard with Malachi as her second in command, local news has been dominated by chilling sightings of human-like creatures running on all fours. Lela knows there’s only one explanation: the Mazikin have arrived in the land of the living.

Needing to maintain the appearance of a normal life for her foster mother, her probation officer, and her classmates, Lela returns to Warwick High along with Malachi. At night they secretly hunt for the Mazikin nest. To assist, two new Guards from very different parts of the Shadowlands are assigned to Lela’s unit, including the bad boy Jim, who repeatedly challenges Lela's authority. Lela struggles to keep all her Guards on the right side of the law, but their mistakes come at a terrible cost.

As one painful revelation follows another and the Mazikin start targeting those closest to her, Lela finds herself more vulnerable than she’s ever been, wanting a future more than she ever has. With an enemy determined to separate soul from body, one question remains: how much is she willing to sacrifice to protect those she loves?

Sanctum was one of my favorite books last year. It made it on my top ten and pretty much had the best romance I had read in a YA book, like, EVER.  It blew my mind and I wanted to scream from the rooftops to people to READ IT! {I encourage you to check out my super rave review.}  So I was a bit scared to read Fractured because I had very, very high expectations.  In this review I hope I can get my feelings about everything across correctly because I really was kind of all over the place in them.

When a book ends on an EPIC note, when it leaves you feeling just SO much, you automatically have that impression in your head.  Which is good, because if it had a sucky ending then you might just give up and now you know you HAVE to know more.  Fractured had one of those endings that your jaw drops and then you lay back on your bed and stare at the ceiling for six hours thinking about it.  It was that whole mix of awful, wonderful and emotional.  I don't want to say too much, but for me it was the emotion that I was finally starting to feel that made me just so, so HAPPY.  But yet... devastated.   Lela and Malachi's journey is not an easy one and not everything is going to be honky dory.  It's just not really possible.  If they did then it wouldn't be realistic.  At the same time you don't want these bad things to happen to people.  Anyway, let's move on.

The ending blew my mind.  Unfortunately the rest of the book didn't.  Sarah is a brilliant writer; her writing, descriptions and world were great.  It was very different from Sanctum as the setting has changed, but they are battling the same evils, just on a different ground.  They have the complexity's of real life to deal with and that was good, and bad.  My issue was I was very frustrated with the romance in this.  I really felt like it took a turn that maybe wasn't necessary and then I spent the entire book kind of angry about that.  So while I know that a lot of the stuff going on was great that whole issue was, well... an issue.  It didn't ever leave my mind.  Which makes sense since it never left Lela's either. 

All in all I know this was a great book.  There was one thing that wasn't great and that kind of really lowered my love for it.  But we still have the amazing characters, and many new ones.  We grow to care about some others that we previously may not have cared about at all (or even disliked).  We get some new information and the plot has moved forward into EPIC territory once again.  Maybe it's a case of middle book syndrome? I don't know... but that ending.  Wow. 

I'm still a big fan of this series, so don't get me wrong.  I'm still screaming from the rooftops to READ SANCTUM, because this series IS worth it.  SO worth it!  You just have to deal with a little bit of less great stuff for awhile in this.  And then, back to EPIC we go! 

If I did half ratings this would a 3.5 stars.

Disclosure: I received an advance copy to read from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.  All opinions expressed are my own and I was not paid or influenced in any way.