REVIEW: Shift by Jeri Smith-Ready

Pub. Date: May 3rd 2011
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pages: 367
Readership: Young adult
Genres: paranormal, ghosts
Rating: ★★★★★ 

Aura’s life is anything but easy. Her boyfriend, Logan, died, and his slides between ghost and shade have left her reeling. Aura knows he needs her now more than ever. She loves Logan, but she can’t deny her connection with the totally supportive, totally gorgeous Zachary. And she’s not sure that she wants to.  

Logan and Zachary will fight to be the one by her side, but Aura needs them both to uncover the mystery of her past—the mystery of the Shift.   

As Aura’s search uncovers new truths, she must decide whom to trust with her secrets…and her heart.

I'm always weary of reading the sequels to the first in a book of a series that I love because I'm worried it won't wow me as much as the first one. This wasn't the case with Shift. I enjoyed it so much that I read it even faster than Shade.

Shift was all about new thing, discoveries and decisions. Aura was the same girl as before but... different. Grown. Especially by the end of the book she really came into her own. She knows who she is now in more ways than one. Aura is a character I know will stick around with me even after I finish the series entirely. I can't even put my finger on all the reasons why I love her so much but I really, really love her. She just seems so real to me. She has things she wants, she has her fears and her insecurities and she makes mistakes. She makes a lot of mistakes. (Ok, maybe not that much but there are a few). But she learns from them and that's the biggest thing. She learns and she grows and she does a lot of that in Shift.

Aura is faced with so much in shift. She finds things out about her mother, she finds things out about her origin and all the while she is battling how she feels about Logan, about Zach and everything in between. Not only that, she has to deal with the DMP and how they're closing in on her and even Zach because of the secrets that they have been uncovering.

Then there are the two boys: Logan and Zach. I love them both so much. They're both very different from each other. Logan is the energetic rockstar with a big heart and while Zach also has a big heart he is more subdued, quiet and collected. (But he's "no' a bloody saint"!) For a while, I had no idea who I wanted to root for. Logan and Aura are so tragic and full of angst, which I am usually a sucker for but Zach and Aura are just as full of angst. Logan has grown so much and he deserves to be happy but he's a ghost; there's no happy ending there. Zach is one of the new beginnings I mentioned (don't worry that's not a spoiler).

Shift was well paced, well written and full of awesome that had me up until 5 in the morning at one point reading until my eyes threatened to fall out of my head. I cannot wait to read Shine, the conclusion of the series.