Review: Shattered Princess by Amber Vant

Shattered Princess
(Hardin Hellhounds #1)
by Amber Vant
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication date: Feb. 2, 2022
Genre: Mature Young Adult Romance
Rating:

I may have lit the match the first time, but I wouldn’t be the one left burned this round. The elites run this town, but they aren’t ready for a girl like me.

Especially the boys who made it known from the beginning I wasn’t wanted here that one summer I stayed with my father. I hadn’t belonged—I knew that—but now I was coming back. Forced into the one place I despised after my addict mother unexpectedly dies. Only months before my eighteenth birthday.

The worst of them all is my half-brother’s best friend. The leader of the group. The oppressor, my enemy. Those hate-fueled cerulean eyes still haunt me in my dreams. He thinks he can break me, but what he doesn’t know is I’ve already been shattered.

I hope they’re ready because I wasn’t the obedient, delicate person they remembered. It’s my turn to watch them simmer. Welcome to the world of the hellhounds.

You’ll hate it here.

SHATTERED PRINCESS is a full-length new adult high school enemies-to-lovers novel. It is the first book in the Hardin Hellhounds Series and does end in a cliffhanger.

Rory has not lived a great life. Her father doesn’t care about her, and her mother blames her for the way her life is. So, needless to say, when Rory is sent to live with her father after her mother passes away, she is less than thrilled. Her step mother is a viper in disguise, her half brother goes out of his way to make her feel unwelcome, and his friends are just as worse. She only has a handful of months left before she turns 18 and can leave everything behind. She just has to tough it out until then.

This is most definitely a bully romance. You can’t even really call it enemies to lovers romance because Cole goes so far out of his way to hurt Rory. In all honesty, it never really makes sense as to why he behaves that way. And don’t even come at me with the whole, “He likes, her. That’s why he pulls on her piggy-tails” bull crap. There’s no excuse for some of his behavior. Other than the fact that his father is also a heartless jerk. So I suppose he learned it from dear old daddy.

While their relationship was hard to swallow at first, I did like it when the tides turned and they started to work on the same team. It also helped having parts of the book in Cole’s POV. So, it allowed you to soften towards him over time, and I do mean over time. I was not immediately a Cole fan. It took me a while to warm up to the idea that he was going to be the love interest due to his previous actions. However, in the end, I was kind of rooting for him because he was just as damaged as everyone else.

I don’t want to go into too much because there were some pretty big developments in this story that really builds the characters and thus their world. However, if you’re into bully style romances, this one will not disappoint. It has a strong and determined heroine who doesn’t back down from her bullies. Which was something that I appreciated in this story. I likes that Rory didn’t cower or let them think that they affected her. She just kept her head high and looked them dead in the eye every time. So, yeah. It was a pretty solid bully romance for anyone interested.