Book Review: Shine

Title: Shine (Shade #3)
Author: Jerri Smith-Ready
Genre: YA paranormal
Rating: 5/5
Cover 8/10


Shine... The end to one of the best love triangles I've read in a long time. Mind you, in all honesty, the triangle ended in Shift, I guess. But that's beside the point. 

Shine starts exactly where Shift left off: Aura is in the cemetery, by Logan's grave, waiting for Zachary's flight - the one that will take him back to Scotland, and away from her - to take off. When news that the flight exploded mid-air a half hour after it left the US, Aura gets lost in a spiral of despair, until a text message from Zach tells her that he is alive... but for how much longer? 

With the DMP and the MI-X breathing down her neck, and Zach kept in custody for suspected involvement in the bombing, everything goes to hell when a fan of Logan's who was on the plane comes back as a ghost, and reports having seen Zachary and Logan talking, right before the flight was supposed to take off. Zach, a pre-Shifter, who shouldn't be able to see ghosts. With ghostly involvement suspected behind the planting of the bomb, US police release Zach... and hand him over to the DMP. Now desperate, Aura will do anything to make sure her new boyfriend doesn't end up like her ex: dead.

But what will be the price to save Zach? Is she willing to spy on her own country to save his sanity, and most likely, his life?

I have to comment on this one scene of the book, and I warn you now: there are spoilers you probably don't want to know below this, so if you haven't read the book, go take a breather, grab something to eat and finish (or start, I guess) Shine. You've been warned.

If I ever meet Ms. Smith-Ready, I'd like to give her a huge congratulations and maybe even some cookies. Like I stated up at the top, this book is YA. Like we all know, young adults have sex. Heavy make-out sessions are common in YA; we even expect it most of the time. But I just loved the way Ms. Smith-Ready wrote down the actual sex. In most YA books, you have the generic movie setting: making out, heading towards the bed, then only return after the deed. Not here. Oh, but it was so skilfully done. You have none of the details you'd get in an adult book, but enough to make sure you know what's happening, and enough to show the enormous bond between the two. If she'd just skipped over the sex, it probably would feel like something was missing in the book. This way, she managed to put it in there, subtly, but there enough that none of the emotions were missed, and subtle enough to make sure that the book never, not even for one second, veered from the YA range. I honestly hope more YA authors take this example; maybe we'll see more heartwarming moments without all the explicitness of an adult book. Virtual cookies to Ms. Smith-Ready for that one.