Shattered: A Thriller

Karen Robards is a New York Times best selling author with over thirty books to her credit. I had never read Robards before Shattered.

Little Marisa Garcia is afraid of the woods near her new home. She knows there are shadow people hiding there - and they're watching her.....and she's right.

Fast forward thirty years. Lisa Grant has been assigned to work cold cases for Scott Buchanan, the District Attorney. While going through the file of a family gone missing - the Garcias - Lisa is stunned by a photo in the file. The mother of the family is a dead ringer for herself. As Lisa follows up with the case, it seems that someone is just as determined that she won't. Complicating things further are her feelings for Scott - their pasts are intertwined -will their future be as well?

Now having never read Robards before I had no idea of her writing style. For those who love romantic suspense, I would say - put her to the top of your list. She skillfully combines romantic tension with an interesting plot. I was happily ensconced on my couch for the day with a wicked head cold and was quite happy reading steamy scenes and smoldering glances. The mystery is really not the main thrust of the plot, more the vehicle to carry the relationship between Lisa and Scott.

I do prefer my mysteries a bit more convoluted, if you will. I did have the plot figured out before the end. The 'bad guys' are easily identified, as are the red herrings. But it was a thoroughly entertaining read for the day.

Fans of Sandra Brown, Linda Howard or Julie Garwood would enjoy Karen Robards.

I enjoyed this book a lot, but felt really disappointed with the ending (which is why I gave it four stars). There were some good twists throughout, and it really held my interest. But the way it ended definitely left me wanting more. I felt like it was ended too quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I actually started to wonder if maybe someone had ripped a page or two out of the book ( I picked it up used), and I actually found myself closely inspecting to see if there could have been some missing pages at the end (I'm pretty sure there weren't). SPOILER ALERT…….It would have been nice if the author had given the reader some kind of interaction between Lisa and her sister, Marisa. There was nothing, after all those years apart. Lisa waits at the airport for her to arrive, and she finally sees her and watches her walk toward her and her father. And that was it. The ending felt so rushed.

I have read several Karen Robards books that I liked, although some of her more recent ones haven't appealed to me. This one sounded like it had an intriguing plot both as a mystery and a romance. The romance was fairly well done at first, but then just lost appeal. The author made the scary parts towards the end seem realistic enough that you felt the heroine's fear and horror, but the love scenes were rather wooden and dull. The Karen Robards books I've read in the past had a lot of thrills and excitement, relating to the mystery and the romance. This book just dragged through all but the start and finish. I kept expecting something to happen when a scene of, say getting into a car was told in detail. Usually when an author starts getting detailed about a mundane scene, it means something will happen soon, but not much did until close to the end.

The fact that the heroine's mother had an awful fatal disease made the story too grim. Actually the story pretty much revolved around this tragedy. Between grief over her parent's illness and impending death, and the horrendous things that happen to her near the end of the story, it's a wonder the heroine didn't have a complete mental breakdown in the denouement. The story had possibilities, but it needed more work.

Another enjoyable read by a great author. I was drawn in from the first chapter. The story line had enough twists and turns to make it interesting and the author tied it together well at the end. Watching the characters work through past issues as they learned to deal with current issues was another plus in the book. If the author wanted to add a chapter or two--one describing how the hero worked out his relationship with his brother and another on how the hero and hero planned to work on their future (i.e., career wise, living arrangements--were they able to keep the horse farm, etc.) would be a bonus.

Rating: 2.5 / 5

I've been reading Karen Robards since not long after I started reading romance. She has some really great romantic suspense books, but unfortunately, her last few books have been subpar, in my opinion. And honestly, I considered this book her last chance at keeping me reading her new releases. Did she win me back? Probably not.

Summary:
After lawyer Lisa Grant loses her job when the firm she works for goes belly-up, she decides to return to her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky and help take car of her mother, who is in the last stages of ALS. Lisa takes a job as a researcher for DA Scott Buchanan. She and Scott have known each other for years, ever since he was the trashy son of a drunk who worked on her parents farm. Now he's a stud lawyer...with a grumbly attitude.

Lisa gets on his bad side and gets banished to look through old cold cases. Which is where she discovers the Garcia file - a young family disappears without a trace during the 1980's. But what's strange is that Lisa looks almost exactly like the mother in the photo. Lisa can't let it go and looks into the case. Bad things start to happen...a fire, an assault, a car accident. And through it, Scott becomes someone Lisa can lean on as she searches for the truth.

Review:
I was really hoping this book would be more like Robards's older romantic suspenses with a dynamic suspense plot and a great romance. It wasn't, unfortunately. I won't say that the book was bad in anyway. I didn't hate it, didn't have much trouble reading it. But it wasn't all that good either, didn't engage me anywhere near like what her older books did. Disappointing.

The suspense plot in the book is rather low intensity. It seems like it's going to be a really great story...missing family from years ago, a woman who looks like them, and other bits and pieces. I had high hopes it would be a great plot. But it never really pulled itself together. The story meanders at a near crawling pace that never really seems to get anywhere.

As the book starts, you get the basic situation and you expect a lot of investigating, fact-finding, discovery...all of it helping to put a puzzle together. But really, as the book moves on, you get very few facts added in. A doll, some near death situations, a couple other little tidbits, and that's it. Then all the sudden you get to the end and get blasted with pages and pages of narrative and dialogue explaining all that had happened. I mean, literally, it's a character sitting there and explaining like 20 years of events for five pages. Some of the explanation seemed to come out of nowhere, with no prior info leading up to it. Which altogether showed me a distinct lack of development throughout the book if that much had to be explained at the end. Plus, there aren't really any good clues to the bad guys' identity. That was annoying.

Also, maybe it's just me, but something seemed off about the fact that you have Lisa, a rising star lawyer at a good Boston law firm getting stuck working a job as a researcher. I mean, come on, are you really telling me that no where in the Lexington area she couldn't find work as a lawyer?

On the romance front...eh, it was okay. Very, very very slow building. For the first 250 pages of the book (its 388 pages long), Lisa is dating someone else, and Lisa and Scott just admire each other from a distance. Kinda dull. Then suddenly they fall into bed and then are practically glued to each others sides. I liked these two characters, and the romance had a sweet edge to it as the book progressed, but something was missing. I didn't feel very connected to these characters.

Another thing I found rather annoying was how the author would randomly toss out ten-dollar words in spots that seemed ill-fitting. Some of the words I didn't even know the meanings of. I consider myself to have a decent vocabulary and when I'm reading fiction for fun, I don't want to have to drag out a dictionary.

That wasn't the only writing issue, either. All throughout the book, there are these sentences that go on and on and on. There'd be sentences with multiple commas, hyphens, parentheses and all this info coming at you so that by the end of the sentence you'd completely forget the initial point. I'd have to stop, reread the first clause of the sentence, then read the rest slowly to get what the author was trying to say. Which, needless to say, is ridiculously annoying and distracting. There were also these long chunks of narrative that didn't help either. I wanted action and dialogue and more often than not got these massive page-long paragraphs of pointless narrative. There'd be like two pages of narrative describing a room. So boring.

So what's the bottomline on this book? It's not bad, really. I think there are plenty of people who would read it and like it. It just didn't do it for me. I think I'll probably end up passing on whatever Robards's next new book might be. I'll still read the few backlist books of hers I have waiting, but the new stuff...probably not.

(This is a hard one to review without spoiling major plot points but I'm going to be 98% spoiler free.) When Robards is writing well, she's one of my favorite writers. Unfortunately, she's writing several books at once in Shattered. While I wouldn't consider Shattered a failure as a novel, I would consider it flawed. There's just too much going on and too little of the emotional impact explored. The majority of the resolution takes place in the closing pages. I kept checking how many pages were left because I couldn't believe we were going to hit the end of the book with so much left to do.

On the positive side, the mystery is engaging. The rich girl / poor boy romantic relationship is well executed. They are a completely believeable couple. Actually, they're so well drawn that it wasn't until just now that I realized they have the same names as my cousin and her husband. That's a win for this book, making me so totally identify with the characters that the names didn't register. Unfortunately, that's also part of the problem. Because Scott and Lisa are so engaging the resolution of their relationships with other characters becomes important to the reader. With so much happening in the plot, there is no room for it. So the time spent establishing all the side characters, their motivations, their potential reactions to a relationship between the primary characters, it feels wasted. Like a series canceled in the middle.

That's the largest flaw in Shattered. The incredible ability of the heroine to survive impossible situations with only scratches is acceptable. (She's probably made out of rubber.) The hero who is completely involved with a drunken mess of a father but totally absent from his sibling's life is excusable. What leaves the reader feeling cheated is the rush to explain all the major plot points away in a police interrogation, resolve one major relationship in less than two pages, show no impact on the rest of the family from the revelations, and then introduce a major character in the last few paragraphs. Shattered closes like a series pushing six scripts into a half hour finale and then having the power fail during filming. The big name actor/actress walks onto set and.... curtain. The emotional payout of so many things is muted, the reader is left in mourning what could have been instead of reveling in what was.

This novel provided good, fairly safe escape on a rainy day. I enjoyed learning how the murder mystery was solved. I had questions about some of the plot details but won't spoil the story for other readers by discussing them.

My first book by this author. I really enjoyed it and could not put it down. The story line grabbed my attention immediately. I liked the main characters and felt they were nicely developed. The chemistry between Scott and Lisa was sizzling. The only negatives were as other reviewers mentioned, the long sentences. I had to go back and reread many sentences because they were too long. Also, the ending did seem rushed. Other than that, I thought the book was great. I will definitely be reading more from this author. Very entertaining!

So far I've made it halfway through the audiobook, and don't know if I can continue. The narrator, while providing a several different tones of voice for the characters, is overly dramatic and sounds too old to be 28 year-old Lisa. In addition to sounding matronly, the "Southern" accent affected for Lisa is more Georgian or South Carolinian than Kentuckian. Good grief - the Southern gentility just drips mint juleps and fainting couches. Ugh!

Moreover, as much as I respect and empathize with persons who have ALS, the halting breathy characterization of Martha is not only insulting, it's grating after just a few sentences. Unfortunately, there are many, many drawn out conversations between Martha and other characters.

I was really looking forward to listening to the latest from Karen Robards, I think I am going to have to retire this audiobook and get my hands on the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed Shattered, this newest novel from Karen Robards. As another reviewer mentioned, the best part of this book was the relationship between Scott and Lisa. After having read some other authors romantic suspense novels and the very graphic and gory details given, I really was glad to read a book that contained less horrific deaths and more romance. Lisa and Scott were pure chemistry together and he was hero personified. There was a more normal feel to this romantic suspense, with Lisa's relationship with her dying mom as much a centerpiece of the book as the blossoming love between her and Scott. The third leg of the stool was the mystery: Lisa's cold case work at the DA's office and where one missing persons' case led. All in all, I consider this to be a fine work by Karen Robards and recommend it highly.

Emily Bell

I really enjoyed Karen Robards "Shattered". This is the third book i've read from this author and i didnt want to put it down. She really knows how to draw you in! She's very detailed with each character....sometimes more than you want to know :) Still a good read.

I have purchased two books just recently by Karen Robards and they were very good so expected this one to be of the same caliber ,but I was disappointed. It was poor abused boy grows up watching very rich girl and friends while her and friends drool over his muscles,while working for her family. Rich girl has the hots for poor boy but she is way above him and out of his reach. yada yada. But! poor boy makes it good and becomes the D.A. and although she is herself a qualified attorney, she due to her mothers illness, must return to the old stomping grounds to take care of her and finds herself asking Scott the D.A. for a job. She then took the only job he offered her as a research assistant. I would say she might be a bit overqualified but as the story progresses you wonder. The story is all about a missing family , the Garcia's. It wasn't the worse story I 've read but it was far from the best. Others may like it. I just have read other books she has written and enjoyed them more.

A mildly entertaining thriller that has trouble building up any momentum because of the endless and repetitive romantic interludes. If I'd wanted to read on every other page about Lisa's yearnings for her arrogant and unpleasant but oh-so-madly-desirable boss, I'd have picked up a Mills and Boon. Come to think of it, many of Robard's passages could have been lifted straight out of one. Personally I prefer my thrillers unadulterated. The story wasn't badly conceived but the characters never seemed very real to me. The ending was rushed and implausible, and left me blinking with the number of new facts that were suddenly introduced. A generally mediocre effort.

I was quickly drawn into this book!!! I loved the storyline and the charcters. And the reader of the audio CD, Susan Ericksen,was fabulous. It starts out pretty quick and really gets you wondering about the missing family too. I loved Lisa and Scott and if I have one complaint at all it's that I wish they would have got together faster. Though I enjoyed the build up very much it seemed to take a little too long and with all the catastrophes happening there wasn't enough alone time for them. I enjoyed the other characters and was happy with the way it ended. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys this genre.

Very disappointing... it seems Ms.Robards just slapped together this book. Except for the beginning, there was no suspense. I could not get into the story. Her earlier works were great, I enjoyed them immensely. Ms. Robards should take a break from writing.....

A young attorney returns home to Kentucky to care for her terminally ill mother. While at work, she stumbles across a cold case which, of course, leads to danger. Throw in some romance, and this is a story that's fun to read and hard to put down.

i have read and enjoyed karen robards in the past and therefore felt comfortable ordering this book without having any reviews to refer to. for the first time i feel compelled to write a review.

where was the editor for this novel? from the very beginning i was struck by oddly chosen adjectives, unimportant information described in excessive detail and lengthy passages devoted to secondary information that neither enriches the novel nor assists in moving the plot along. unfortunately, the author spends absolutely no time crafting the central plot.

the cold case file with a 30 year old picture of a mother, who is a dead ringer for lisa grant today, and a little girl, who looks a lot like lisa would have at the same age, should be a promissing start for a mystery-thriller, but the author never developes a plot with twists and turns, "tells" and red herrings for the reader to figure out. instead, the family home is torched, the protagonist inexplicably has the feeling that it is because of the cold case file that she brought home and a series of attempts on her life begin without her having even made a first inquiry.

in place of a well developed plot and characters, the author spends the two final chapters simply describing the entire back story, all of the action we did not see take place (or even hinted at), and all of the motivation explained neatly. a total cheat. not surprisingly, these final chapters are tedious in their detail, but were clearly easier for the author to write than actually strategizing a plot with timing, reveals, motivations and mis-directions to engage the reader.

the author phoned this in.

I have only read one other Karen Robards book and don't even remember it, so I wasn't expecting much from this one. I thought it was great. I loved the relationship development between the main characters. It had great suspense mixed with a steamy romance which for me was a perfect combination. I will definitely look for other books by her.

This was another great book for Mrs. Robards! I loved both Scott and Lisa, they had such great chemistry together. It was nice to see a couple that had more then a week romance before they fell in love. The suspense and storyline were great and I loved the ending!

I listened to this audiobook while walking. It kept me more than intrigued, it kept me walking. The only part I didn't enjoy was the love scene, although I know this is a romance. Unfortunately, my walks are 45 minutes long and so was that blasted love scene -- I ended up skimming through that section to get to the "good stuff" (i.e., the plot).

This was my first Karen Robards book, and it definitely won't be my last.

i have read and enjoyed karen robards in the past and therefore felt comfortable ordering this book without having any reviews to refer to. for the first time i feel compelled to write a review.

where was the editor for this novel? from the very beginning i was struck by oddly chosen adjectives, unimportant information described in excessive detail and lengthy passages devoted to secondary information that neither enriches the novel nor assists in moving the plot along. unfortunately, the author spends absolutely no time crafting the central plot.

the cold case file with a 30 year old picture of a mother, who is a dead ringer for lisa grant today, and a little girl, who looks a lot like lisa would have at the same age, should be a promissing start for a mystery-thriller, but the author never developes a plot with twists and turns, "tells" and red herrings for the reader to figure out. instead, the family home is torched, the protagonist inexplicably has the feeling that it is because of the cold case file that she brought home and a series of attempts on her life begin without her having even made a first inquiry.

in place of a well developed plot and characters, the author spends the two final chapters simply describing the entire back story, all of the action we did not see take place (or even hinted at), and all of the motivation explained neatly. a total cheat. not surprisingly, these final chapters are tedious in their detail, but were clearly easier for the author to write than actually strategizing a plot with timing, reveals, motivations and mis-directions to engage the reader.

the author phoned this in.

I have only read one other Karen Robards book and don't even remember it, so I wasn't expecting much from this one. I thought it was great. I loved the relationship development between the main characters. It had great suspense mixed with a steamy romance which for me was a perfect combination. I will definitely look for other books by her.

This was another great book for Mrs. Robards! I loved both Scott and Lisa, they had such great chemistry together. It was nice to see a couple that had more then a week romance before they fell in love. The suspense and storyline were great and I loved the ending!

I listened to this audiobook while walking. It kept me more than intrigued, it kept me walking. The only part I didn't enjoy was the love scene, although I know this is a romance. Unfortunately, my walks are 45 minutes long and so was that blasted love scene -- I ended up skimming through that section to get to the "good stuff" (i.e., the plot).

This was my first Karen Robards book, and it definitely won't be my last.

This story was good but Lisa Grant, the main character, has to be the most idiotic person. I don't understand how someone can be a target of so many "accidents" could off by herself in every possible instance. I'm so tired if these beautiful "smart" heroines who require saving as they continue to get into the most obvious and ridiculous situations. Really? Can this lady get a clue?

It is hard to believe that Karen Robards wrote this. I love every book she has written, until this one.
The story line is actually very good, and at times I was riveted. There were some tense moments. However,
the writing is horrible. The sentences are so long that by the time you get to the end, you have to look
back at the beginning to see how the sentence started. There are way too many commas and unbelievably numerous hyphens. On the first page of Chapter One:
"He stood behind his battered metal desk--no expensive mahogany for this district attorney, the blue-collar man's
friend!--glaring at her out of light blue eyes that were, on this Tuesday morning, slightly bloodshot, as though he'd
tied one on the night before or, more probably, though she hated to admit it, been working until the wee hours."
What?!? This is not an exception; this is the norm for the entire book. In fact, it gets much worse. Some sentences even had the addition of parentheses thrown in. It was exhausting to read and re-read these run-on sentences. It totally took away from the plot.

I was interested in the premise of the book. There were some good parts, but honestly I thought it was going to be more interesting. The book seemed to drag on, sometimes leading nowhere. The ending seemed really rushed, and you didn't get any clues at all who the person was that was the murderer.

Dear Karen,

Please don't write any more books until a) you get some new ideas and plot strategies and b) get a new editor. You need to quit rehashing your old books. The two principal characters have a long family history, one of the peripheral family characters has a problem with alcohol, and OMG there is a fire that leave our heroine in distress. We have seen these over and over in your other, more enjoyable books. This is nothing but a poorly written mishmash of Tigers Eye, Green Eyes and Paradise County to name a few of your previous. Even the romance scenes seemed perfunctory and watered down. I should have just checked it out of the library instead of shelling out the $14 that I paid at Cosco. If I had even bothered, since really it was just a waste of time. You used to be a fun, quick read with a little mystery and romance mixed in. Now it just seems tired. Take some time off, travel, do something that might inspire some original thoughts. If you don't have any, then don't bother with another book, because your readers won't bother either.