Shielded Past, from Patti Morelli

Hi, there! I AM GRADUATED OMG! I DID IT! GOODBYE COLLEGE!

Okay, I’m controlled now. This is my first review as a graduated journalist and I’m so happy that the book is Shielded Past, from sweet Patti Morelli! I received it from the author in exchange of an honest review and this is it! Let’s do this!

from my Instagram 🙂

The Story

Kate was raised by a foster family and never really knew anything about her past. It wasn’t a problem: she had her best friend ever, Annie, a loving husband, Greg, a foster mom that was very proud of her… Or so she thought.

After moving to a lovely house and getting pregnant, Kate starts to feel that there is something off with her so-called perfect life. Everything looks creepy: her house, her neighborhood, her new dog, her past…

Now that she is expecting a child of her own, Kate needs to know whether those scary incidents are really happening or if she is losing her mind and could be qualified to be in a place like the old mental hospital near her home…

The Analysis

Just remembering that those were my impressions and opinion while reading the book 🙂

This book was AWESOME. SO AMAZING. SO PERFECT. I apologize in advance, as it is so much more complex than my humble description, but it was a creepy and intelligent read! It surpassed all my expectations and for sure was one of the best horror/mystery books that I’ve read in my life! Overall rating was 4 stars 🙂 Now let’s get serious, haha!

The writting technique is the point that lost a star on my rating. Specially on the beginning of the book, I felt that I was reading a screenplay that had been transformed into a movie. And there were other minor typing/grammatical errors along the way, so this is the only reason I didn’t gave this book a full and big 5 stars rating. It was a third person narrated book with switching point of views, in the exact way that I like, so we always knew all that was going on. Moreover, Morelli was brilliant at this because we couldn’t be sure of nothing until the really final chapters, as the mystery was too big. Morelli has a simple writing style that makes you fly by her story and feel the intensity of it like a punch, haha! I was constantly breathless each time that I picked up this book to read and couldn’t sleep after the end, haha!

The plot was brilliant and very well executed. For every aspect of her life that Kate solved, there were other four or five new that she had to question. PERFECTION. The mystery remains until the very end, as the real villain threatens to kill Kate and we don’t know if she is going to survive. And I’m not going to tell you if she did ❤ There are no loose ends on this book, everything gets solved – oh, almost. There is a bit of a cliff hanger on the epilogue, but I can live with that, it was nice, haha! I hope this becomes a series!

Bonus point: this is a horror/mystery book that has an old mental institution on its plot. I love those! It’s one of my favorite scenarios for horror books, haha! That’s why I lost my mind in the Asylum series, haha!

I also freaking loved the way Morelli builds her characters: they are so real in the little things, you know? Good or bad, their actions are true and you can understand their minds, their problems, desires and developments. I loved Annie and really connected with her (I swear is not just because my middle name is Anne, haha!). She was always so funny and optimistic despite everything that happened in her life and her eventual boyfriend is one of my new bookish boyfriends (oh the list that I never made, haha!).

The scenarios description was always very detailed, but not that kind that tires off the reader. I could see all the places just like in a movie in my head, where nothing passes in blank for Morelli. This is that type of book that, after you finish, you want to re-read just to see if you could have figured everything out sooner, haha! If you like a good thriller / mystery / horror book, just read this one. Just do it.

That’s it! Thanks for reading and thanks again to Patti Morelli for trusting me with her work! I loved this ❤ Do you guys like books that talk about the horror of mental institutions??