Mini Reviews: Hidden Sight by Simone Pond & Broken by S.J. West

Sometimes you read a book and don't really have a lot to say when finished... That's where a mini review comes in handy!

Both books borrowed via Kindle Unlimited.

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Blinded in an accident, only she can see the truth. 

Losing her parents and her sight changes everything for Sibyl Forsyth. Terrified and refusing to accept the gift that she can now "see" into the supernatural realm, Sibyl stays holed up in her backyard, closed off from the outside world. 

When she's plagued with a vision of a catastrophic event, Sibyl knows she can't possibly sit back and watch her California coastal town's ultimate demise. Reluctantly, Sibyl sets out to stop her premonition from coming true. With the help of her shifter guide dog, Vago, the two join forces to save the day as they encounter intensely evil spirits with a vicious vendetta. In a race against time, Sibyl and Vago battle their own demons while trying to save the town from an explosive ending that nobody else sees coming. 

I'd class this book as a mature YA or very young NA urban fantasy.

It starts with a horrible accident that takes the lives of Sibyl's parents, destroy's Sibyl's dreams of going to college on a sports scholarship and leaves Sibyl blind but able to 'see' the supernatural.

After the intro, you're thrust into a one-year later type scenario where Sibyl has become a hermit with only her aunt and dog - who is more than just a dog - to keep her company.

It's slow, it's boring and it's incredibly frustrating that at nineteen years old she's effectively giving up on doing anything with herself... But anyway. 

Sibyl has freaky visions of bad stuff happening and when she foresees a horrific event decimating her little town she - after a lot of wishy-washy annoyance - decides to pull up her big girl pants, brave the outside and try and prevent the disaster while learning more about her powers.

This is when the story picked up. 

Sibyl became a little less annoying and everything got a little more interesting.

That said, the characters and the world all felt flat to me.

Everything was so... Two-dimensional, like if you scraped the surface of the characters or the world you'd find nothing underneath and it made everything just feel pointless. 

It was hard to care about the characters. It was hard to get excited about what was going on.

The book presents a novel twist on the supernatural but everything was just a bit boring and I just couldn’t be convinced to invest myself in the outcome or in what comes next. 

I finished it because it was a fairly quick read but won’t continue with the series. 

The best bit, in my opinion, was the cover. 

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At the tender age of seven, Jess Riley’s parents were ripped out of her life by the Tear, a ripple of white light in the sky which randomly transports people from Earth to alternate realities and distant planets once a year. On the night the Tear first appeared, the Watchers, a mysterious group of men possessing supernatural powers, made their presence known to the leaders of the world, earning their complete trust to deal with the turmoil the Tear caused.

Now twenty-two years old, Jess is an agent working for the Watcher Agency searching for a way to bring her parents back home. When the leader of the Watchers, Mason Collier, recruits her to join his team, Jess quickly discovers she is meant to play a major role in sealing the Tear forever. Mason and Jess instantly find themselves drawn to one another but they both resist their mutual attraction for different reasons. Broken by past events in their lives, they each struggle to overcome their fears and find the strength to take a chance on one another.

This book has an interesting premise in that so many years before this story begun, a giant 'tear' appeared across the sky and lots of Earth's citizens disappeared through it to be replaced by citizens of other dimensions. Every year the tear opens and every year more people are lost.
At the time the tear appeared a mysterious group of individuals stepped forward to help keep order and these were called Watchers. It is not common knowledge who the watchers are or where they come from but the leaders of the world trust them implicitly.

Jess is a young Watcher agent with secret talent.
Through a series of events she gets drawn deep into the world of the watchers and discovers she has a special destiny that must be fulfilled or bad things will happen... Pretty standard fare really but the world created was incredibly interesting.
The author writes about angels and fallen angels without religiously pontificating.
She writes heartfelt characters who you really like and bad guys who you want to know more about. There is a slow(ish) burn romance that romance lovers - like me - can sink into but it doesn't dominate the story and you 100% do not have to have read the sister series (prequel series?) to this one to follow the events and enjoy them.

On a side note, when I borrowed this book via Kindle Unlimited, I also got the audiobook included (on loan). How cool is that?! I ended up listening to the book via audible and the narrator was pretty good! The pace was nice, it was easy to differentiate between characters and it wasn't too long!

At some point, I hope to continue listening to this series for there are a lot of questions unanswered at the end of this book and a lot to do before the story is done!