Review: Shattered (Sundance Series Book 4) by CP Rider

Shattered by C.P. Rider
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Secrets and Lies

This book is part of a continuing series and you need to have read the previous books to understand the characters and the direction of the plot.

This book continues to exhibit the excellent quality of CP Rider’s writing. Each book in this series that I read makes me fall a little bit more in love with Sundance and it’s inhabitants. The author creates a book-sized plot within a series-sized plot and it all makes sense at the end of each part. You are left hanging at the end of the book but in a way that is more of a slight itch than a raging case of hives that you need to scratch. You want to know what happens next but you don’t weep with frustration that you have to wait.

This book primarily deals with the secrets and lies that Neely has been told her entire life by the people she loved and trusted, all in the name of protecting her from worry. This book finally begins to unravel a little of the mystery that is Neely, when she is forced to go to Austin, where her Dad lives, to deal with yet another threat.

Lucas plays a much more minor role in this book, that’s not to say he’s not important because he is, it’s because his physical presence is less. When Neely goes to Texas she goes with Amir, the Fourth Alpha for the Sundance Shifters Group, and we get to know him better than before. He’s an interesting character but still a bit of a mystery, even by the end of the book.

The threat that Neely goes to face is an unknown organisation that has access to a lot of very powerful shifters, who they use as a threat against the inhabitants of Sundance. Alpha Juan, Lucas’ fellow prehistoric shifter and friend, needs Neely’s help because his brother has been missing for over a year and he believes that the threat against Sundance abducted his brother. Neely owed him a favour from his help in getting her free from the sanctuary and it ties in with what she was going there for anyway. Neely also wants to take the opportunity to confront her father about her late mother, a woman she didn’t know existed until recently.

This book is filled with betrayals, secrets and lies. It’s also filled with love, loyalty and trust. Neely has to find her way through the choices needed to find happiness and she has to do it alone, the way she always has done.

I really loved this book. We learned so much about Neely and her history in this book and it’s fascinating. She’s an amazingly well-rounded character with tonnes of good in her and a few well placed glaring flaws. We learn in this book a lot about where her flaws come from. I love the banter between her and Lucas, as they are both ridiculously silly at times. I also really enjoy the way Lucas truly treasures Neely. She is his whole world and he shows it in every action.

Every relationship in this book is interesting, be it between the sister witches at the tower, and their support and loyalty towards Neely, or Chandra who makes Neely face the hard questions in her unflinching and caring way. All the characters are so well developed that the relationships between them are natural and believable.

You wrap all the fantastic characters and plot in the fascinating world-building and you get a fantastic book within an exceptional series. I can’t recommend it more highly. If you like Urban Fantasy, I’m pretty sure you will love this.

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