Shadows by Paula Weston | Book Review #84

“It’s almost a year since Gaby Winters watched her twin brother die. In the sunshine of a new town her body has healed, but her grief is raw and constant. It doesn’t help that every night in her dreams she fights and kills hell-beasts. And then Rafa comes to town. Not only does he look exactly like the guy who’s been appearing in Gaby’s dreams, he tells her things about her brother and her life that cannot be true, things that are dangerous. Who is Rafa? Who are the Rephaim? And who is Gaby? The truth lies in the shadows of her nightmares. ”

My first impressions about this book is that I really like Rafa and Gaby together. Secondly, why do angel books always, ALWAYS, have a character named Rafael who is the love interest of the main character? Thirdly, if there’s one thing that matters to Gaby in this life, it’s her brother, Jude. …And I really don’t like Daniel and Nathaniel. 

We see a lot of other characters besides Gaby. There’s Maggie, Jason, and Simon. Along with Daniel and Nathaniel but their play of action is so clear even to me, that it hurts that sometimes Gaby doesn’t see it. And then there’s Rafa. – But there’s only one point of view, and that’s obviously Gaby’s pov. Which kinda makes it hard to discern whether or not to be able to trust the other characters.

Gaby is the type of person who knows few people, and keeps fewer people in her inner circle. Gaby would do anything for her friend. I think that says a lot about Gaby. I also really like the fact that Gaby and her brother Jude were really close. We don’t know yet, who Gaby was before her accident, but the Gaby we know now is the type to fight when she needs to. She also has a temper, which I like about Gaby. Her temper gives her a certain edge. But we also don’t get to know Gaby personally. The situation with Gaby is like she doesn’t mean to keep everyone at an arms distance emotionally, but she can’t help it? Like she’s scared of losing something that close to her again.

Like I want to trust Rafa, and he certainly has the charm to get people to trust him, but with Rafa, he’s guarded in a.. raw way. He and Gaby have an unlikely connection, but once that connection was proven I really felt like Gaby’s guard went down. And Rafa has proven his trustworthiness to Gaby. I just have a feeling that something between Rafa and Gaby is going to go down in the second book and the feeling that I’m getting is one that, like, I should’ve seen coming. But I have no idea what it is.

I’m really glad that Gaby has someone to trust and lean on when she needs to. I just can’t help but feeling that there’s way more that Rafa’s keeping from Gaby. And Rafa’s said that too: that he’s keeping stuff from her. It just has my guard up, and I hope Gaby keeps hers up as well. Even though she’s well into falling in love with him. My spide-y senses are tingling.

The next important character is Maggie. We don’t see how she and Gaby met, we see it through Gaby’s memories. Maggie has proven to herself that she’s strong as she could possibly be, and what happens to her in this story absolutely has Maggie on her guard. In the end though, she has -literally- trusted Gaby with her life. And it’ll probably continue to be like that throughout the rest of the series. That connection is one you get with them being best friends. But I can’t help but feel that Maggie will betray Gaby in the next book somehow. It’ll probably go down like “I didn’t want to do it to you! I didn’t want to betray you! I had no choice!” and then gaby will go “There’s always a choice.” and then their relationship will be severed. Dun dun dunnnn. That’s just a theory though, I don’t actually know for sure, for sure.

Jason is a character that I completely overlooked and I shouldn’t have. He’s not what I expected and honestly a great character. I know we’ll be seeing more of him in the next book for sure, because of what happened nearing the end of Shadows.

Then there’s Jude. I can’t feel like something is up with him. I can’t tell if he’s went to “the dark side” or not. There are way too many possibilities that could happen within the next book. Other than that though, Jude was always in the thoughts of Gaby and the others. The book is pretty much about him, and he wasn’t even in the book itself. – Very complicated, but Paula Weston managed to work that one out.

I like this book honestly. I like the mystery as to what has happened to Gaby’s memories. I like the relationship that Gaby and Rafa are slowly forming – the fact that they’re both attracted to each other yet, Rafa doesn’t want to do anything lest Gaby gets her memories back and Gaby ends up hating him again. Which I don’t think Gaby will hate him. I think she’ll be very conflicted and try to make the new life mesh with the old one. But I can’t be sure of that yet.

By the end of the book we still don’t know who took Gaby’s memories away. The book’s storyline has led the characters to believe that it was somehow Jude who had done it with the help of someone else, but I really truly believe that it was Gaby herself who did it. I mean, she’s described multiple times in this book to have been one of the best Nephilim fighters. And there are always legends, myths, and stories that there are some cases where some Nephilim have special abilities aside from the others. So it is completely plausible in my mind that Gaby could’ve done this to herself. This just leaves the question of where, and what happened to Jude.

Something that bothers me -and I keep on forgetting to mention this- is that everyone, ever-y-one, talks and acts like there are two Gaby’s. And well, there is. The before and after, but it actually really upsets Gaby more than she lets on? And these people aren’t even noticing it, and it they are, they’re certainly not mentioning it. And I think that only aggravates Gaby more honestly. It bothers her so much that she’s constantly being compared to a Gaby that Gaby doesn’t even know. Like this is the Gaby now. They need to understand that: She doesn’t remember her past. This is who she is now.

All in all Shadows is a very easy read. We see Gaby living this no-attraction to anything, still grieving the loss of her brother, life and it’s not doing anything for Gaby at all. So when the story heats up, it heats up. It’s like Gaby has this routine going on in her life, and then suddenly she’s thrown so off-kilter that it jars her and her best friend. And of course, new revelations are made, thoughts thrown into the wind only to be picked up again and be given new hope for…

Anyway…The story flows smoothly and there’s a lot that was touched upon in this first instalment. And yet, there’s a lot of stuff that the story left untouched and that leaves me wanting to read the second book very badly. Oh! And I think that the story takes place in Australia, so that’s awesome!

Thank you for reading my review of Shadows! You can click the cover below to be lead to Shadows on GoodReads.

Until next time,

Adele