Blurb from Goodreads:I’m dying, I thought. This was unexpected and not at all how I envisioned my death. I was supposed to die gardening in a flowerbed as a hundred-year-old woman, not as a seventeen-year-old trapped in a lake beneath inches of ice.
Llona Reese is used to living on the run. After the Vykens killed her parents, she knew they would eventually come for her too. She can’t take any chances. But when she starts to make friends for the first time in her life, she gets careless and lets her guard down. Big mistake.
As an Aura, Llona can manipulate light and harness its energy. But if she wants to survive, Llona will have to defy the Auran Council and learn to use her power as a weapon against the Vyken whose sole desire is to take her light. Now she’s caught in something even bigger than she can understand, with a power she can’t wield, and no one she can trust, except, just maybe, a mysterious stranger.
In this breathtaking and romantic adventure, Rachel McClellan delivers a truly mesmerizing story that will keep you guessing to the very end.
Title: Fractured Light (Fractured Light #1)
Author: Rachel McClellan
Publisher: Cedar Fort
Publication Date: February 8, 2012
The Cover Contessa's Review:
I have to say that this book did not live up to what I would have expected. I don't give half stars, but if I did I would probably give it 2.5 stars. So I'm torn between a 2 and 3 here on Goodreads. The premise of this book had lots of potential but I feel the execution was fairly poor.
If you know me, you know I love my covers. So it's not surprise that I was totally drawn in by this one. I love the look of it, how it shows the light which is so important to the story. But I have to say that the cover, while beautiful, was rather a misleading draw into the book.
The lead character, Llona, carries light within her because she's an Aura. This "power" basically gives her more strength than others. It is more prominent during a full moon. I thought Llona would be a strong, independent character who basically kept to herself. But she wasn't strong at all. As a matter of fact, I found her to be rather dependent and a bit on the whiny side. I have to say that she annoyed me more than anything else during this book. Had she really been keen on learning what her power was for and how to use it, I think I would have liked her much better. But she spent most of the book pining after a boy and telling us how private she was but doing things like joining the basketball team. She was contradictory and just made no sense to me.
Christian was the love interest. While I liked him for the most part, he drove me a bit batty as well. He was strong and rather silent, but he seemed like he had a lot of loyalty towards Llona. However, he had this push and pull to him that drove me bonkers. He sent total mixed signals to Llona and it annoyed me to no end. I wanted to shake him and tell him to make up his mind. His character could have been so much better fleshed out than it was, so he wouldn't be so typical and arrogant.
The secondary characters really leant no support to the story. May, Llona's best friend, is around but we really learn nothing about her. And she just doesn't seem like a great best friend, one who would support Llona.
As for the execution, ugh, it was very underdeveloped. The author did so much telling and hardly showed us anything. There was paragraph upon paragraph of Llona narrating what was going on. I would have liked to see her interact more with the other characters. The book does get better as it goes on but for me I need to be hooked from the beginning. It took me quite a while to read this book as I kept having to put it down!
As for world building, I'm still not 100% sure what the auras do. They have light in them, and it's used to calm others, but when is this supposed to happen? And why? As for the "bad guys", besides wanting to use the Auras to increase their power, there was nothing else about them in the story. Suddenly we just know about them, but what is the history of the Auras and the Vykens? I didn't feel these characters were based on any type of mythology at all. I have no issue with the author making up her own powers and such, but there was just no background to support it.
When it comes down to it, for me, this book was rather boring for the first 1/2 to 3/4 and followed very typical characters ARCs. The story line was very predictable. I easily guessed Christian's roll before it was revealed and I knew who the bad guy was from pretty much the start. There were times when I felt like nothing significant was happening the what the author was writing was just something to fill the space until the next scene happens. I hate being bored in books and this one just didn't hit home with me until the very end. I am surprised I even pushed through it. I do think it will grab many readers, especially if they want a bit of a different and unique plot.
Rachel was born and raised in Idaho, a place secretly known for its supernatural creatures. When she's not in her writing lair, she's partying with her husband and four children. Her love for storytelling began as a child when the moon first possessed the night. For when the lights went out, her imagination painted a whole new world. And what a scary world it was…
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