Melted and Shattered by Emily Eck Review

4.5 Smooches!

Synopsis

Elle was never broken.
She wasn’t shattered.
And she sure as hell never needed to be saved.
That is,
until she found out what the aftermath of love was capable of causing.

Doing her best to stay afloat amidst the sh!t storm that has become her life, Elle is hanging on by a thread. Between worrying about Fernie’s precarious future, an incident with a Shemar Moore look-alike gone terribly wrong, and an inability to let go of her feelings for J, Elle just can’t seem to get her head straight.

Deciding a change of atmosphere is what she needs, Elle heads to Mexico to study abroad for a semester.

She has no idea that she is walking into an even worse storm.

One that involves a pissed off MC President, a ruthless drug cartel, and a man willing to die to have her light.

Review

This book continues from where Steel and Ice left off. We follow Elle as she recovers in hospital, we watch her struggle with what she is feeling and who she wants to see and who she doesn’t. Elle awakes to Chris by her side, as the ever present best friend will always be. When J visits Elle sends him away, and reading this is hard for both of them. We can feel Elle’s pain and you can see the hurt in J. “I was empty. Or at least I thought I was empty. J ran his hand over his face, catching a few tears before they could fall. As he turned and left the room, I realized I wasn’t empty. In fact, I was overflowing.”

This book centres around Elle’s recovery, moving onto some kind of normal and “her cubs”. We get to read the aftermath of the shooting and how it affected everyone not just Elle. We see the pain with Chris, Genesis, J and Fernie. We follow the fall out they all have because of this. Chris spends all her time trying to help Elle back into some kind of living state. Genesis has a secret to hold onto, which at 16 is a lot to handle. Fernie has the worst of all with what is happening because of what happened. He feels guilty over what happened to Elle, he is hurting because of Genesis and there is nothing that can be done. Elle tries to life some of the burden. “I was running on instinct, and my instinct said you had to live.”

J crumbles, this is hard to read. We know that he feels the guilt of what happened, whether it was an accident or not. The person he loves he hurt. We read Elle struggle with how she feels, she wants to hate him but she loves him. “Baby, I’ll be the light for the both of us. Just promise me you’ll let me. Promise me you’ll give me a shot at redemption.”

J doesn’t appear for most of the book, but we do get to read about Jose, and we get to watch the friendship between the two of them grow. I loved Jose in this book, he is such a lovable character and if Elle’s heart wasn’t with J, I think that Jose would be a great fit for her.

Melted and shattered was different to the first book in the series as this was about Elle and about her finding herself and a way to live without J in her life. It was about her realising that the kids at the centre mean more to her then she knew, it was about her doing what she can to help those around her and what she can do to better herself.

The ending to this book, just left me wanting more. I need to know how J and Elle’s story ends. Do they get the happy ever after they deserve or do the outside force have more sway. I need the answers. Well done Emily Eck on another great book in this series.

Stacey