Review: "Shatter Me" by Tori St. Claire


Note: This ARC was provided by Entangled Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Being a former Marine, Alex McCray has faced death many times, but the death of his best friend and fellow Marine still weighs upon him. Drew Sanders sacrificed himself in order to save Alex and his dying request is what has Alex making his way to the home Drew shared with his wife Reagan, the very woman that Alex has always been attracted to. Seeing the less than ideal conditions Reagan has been living in sparks something in Alex, making him ditch his earlier plan to simply check on her and to leave, afraid his attraction to her will do him in. He wants to take care of Reagan but being with her makes him want more.

After years of abuse at the hands of her late husband, Reagan Sanders is finally free of him. Yes, people may think the worst of her because she isn't mourning him the way they think the widow of a war hero should but it's enough that she doesn't tell them what kind of monster he really was. Having his best friend Alex around is difficult enough, what with the attraction she's always felt toward him, but hiding the truth from him makes everything worse. But her feelings for Alex are intensifying the more time he's around her, and what happens if she finally confesses her secrets and shows him all the scars Drew left her with?

Shatter Me is a standalone novel by Tori St. Claire and is about an ex-Marine, Alex McCray, who tries to keep the promise he made to the man who saved his life but ends up battling his own feelings for her. It is about a woman, Reagan Sanders, who suffered a great deal of abuse from her late husband Drew, and even though he's already gone, she isn't fully able to move forward with her life, still keeping his secrets in order to not shatter the image people have of him. Having feelings for his best friend is also difficult because Alex is the one person who feels the greatest guilt over Drew's death and telling him the kind of man Drew was inside their home is something Reagan isn't prepared to do. She isn't naive enough to think that Alex will readily believe her since the Drew Alex knew is nowhere near the one that Reagan lived with. 

Any hope of a happily ever after for these two more challenging to get to because Alex is caught between his loyalty to a dead man and his love for the dead man's widow. There's a lot of sexual tension between Alex and Reagan but there were times that everything just felt repetitive, making me wish that it was a shorter read or that something different had happened at other times. Instead, it was this laundry list of actions and reactions that were on repeat, taking the enjoyability factor down several notches and leaves you itching to skim. Then, there's a point close to the end of the book where it seems as if all kinds of light bulbs go on and things go into warp speed, leaving the ending feeling rushed. Both Alex and Reagan did have their moments but I felt Shatter Me had so much more potential, so I'm going to give it 3.5 stars. ♥

Release Date: 19 May 2015

Date Read: 17 May 2015

Learn more about Tori St. Claire here.

Pre-order Shatter Me on Amazon | B&N | Kobo.

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