Review: ‘Shimmer’ (The Rephaim #3) by Paula Weston

Gaby thought her life couldn’t get more complicated.

She’s almost used to the idea that she’s not the nineteen-year-old backpacker she thought she was. She can just about cope with being one of the Rephaim—a 140-year-old half-angel—whose memories have been stolen. She’s even coming to grips with the fact that Jude, the brother she’s mourned for a year, didn’t die at all.

But now Rafa—sexy, infuriating Rafa—is being held, and hurt, by Gatekeeper demons. And Gaby has to get the bitterly divided Rephaim to work together, or Rafa has no chance at all.

It’s a race against time—and history. And it may already be too late.

(Two reviews in a row from me? I know, right?! It’s because I’m between writing one novel and the next, and it’s been so busy and stressful at work I’ve been comfort reading at night time. Anyway, enough about that. On with the review!)

Shimmer is book three of four in The Rephaim series, and I usually don’t see much point in reviewing books this far into a series. You’re presumably either reading it because you loved the first two books—and really don’t want to read spoilers—or you haven’t encountered it yet and would probably be better served by a review of the first book.

But the blurb itself contains all the spoilers I’m going to reveal: that Gaby is a Rephaim, Jude is alive and Rafa has been taken by demons. I pinkie swear.

I commented in my review of the previous book, Haze, that the first two books are set over the space of about two weeks, and how the fast pace is one of the breathtaking things about the series. Shimmer continues and accelerates that action-packed trend; the events in it are set over a total of about 24 hours. But that doesn’t mean the story is hollow. In fact, it’s packed with tension and combat, and starts to reveal more of the hidden truth about the Rephaim and others around them. The next and final book, Burn, comes out in 2015 and—if the cliff-hangery, super-exciting end of Haze is anything to go by—promises to be even more jammed full of awesome.

Also, I love these characters like you would not believe. With the exception of the demons themselves, there are very few people to hate in this—even the enigmatic politician of a fallen angel, Nathaniel, is a character I can sympathise with, despite the fact he’s frustrating as anything and blinded by his own goals. One of the interesting thing about the story is how some of the characters I really didn’t like in the first book have grown, and grown on me: Mya, Malachi, Taya and even Daniel are all good examples.

My favourite character, though, is Jude. If I could choose anyone in the world to be my long-lost twin brother, it’d be him. Although since the post of twin is taken by Gaby, I can think of other ways I could use Jude in my life. Phwoar! Just sayin’.

The romantic tension between Gaby and Rafa is, naturally, missing for a large slice of the book, since he’s, well, not in it. But we really get to see how much Gaby cares about him; all her ambivalence over the secrets he’s keeping about their past evaporates, and in turn his ambivalence about her possible reaction when she finds out those secrets falls away. I guess being tortured—or seeing your loved one tortured—by demons gives you a sense of perspective.

This is a great book and a great series. The only bad thing is that now I have to wait, like, a year to see how the story concludes. My plan is to stare at Paula Weston until she’s finished.

That’s not creepy, is it?