Shattered


Fiction - Mystery - General
278 Pages
Reviewed on 12/03/2019
Buy on Amazon

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    Book Review

Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

Shattered by Leila Kirkconnell is a crime and suspense novel revolving around businesswoman and wife, Amanda Verchall. While away on a business trip to San Francisco, Amanda's past comes back to haunt her in a flurry of messages and phone calls from Andy, a man who claims to be witness to a crime Amanda is suspected of having committed in a foster home where she spent some of her childhood. Further complicating Amanda and her husband Brad's life is when a construction crew comes across human skeletal remains in the home of Stephanie and Liz, twin sisters who have reclaimed an old Victorian their family once owned...a home that Amanda also happened to once live in.

Shattered takes an interesting, suspenseful look at how the events of childhood trauma can impact every facet of the victim's adult life and, in particular, their relationships. Leila Kirkconnell does a good job of keeping the answers to this crime story under wraps, withholding it from even the protagonist herself until the last possible moment (one that is almost the last possible moment ever for Amanda). The writing is simple and straightforward but the tension is rife on every page and there's no question the revelation of 'whodunnit' is a surprising twist. One thing I really enjoyed was how Kirkconnell is able to transfer human emotion into physical movement. She has a real talent for suspense and connecting a reader to her characters, bringing them to life and making you want to keep turning the pages. Recommended.