I don’t have too much to say about Silver Shard. I read the first book in the series, Silverwood, back in 2015, and although I enjoyed it at the time I can’t remember too much about the events of the first novel. I didn’t really feel like rereading it though, so I went into Silver Shard hoping that I was going to get a good recap of the events of book one so I wouldn’t feel too lost.


In all honesty, I think you would be able to read Silver Shard as a standalone if you wanted to. The events of book one were lightly rehashed but could easily have just been referring to past events in the character’s lives, as the events of book one don’t have much bearing on the events of book two.

I still really like the Silverwood family, and they definitely still gave me Winchester vibes in this book, but I found myself struggling to care for them. It seemed too obvious that everything was going to work out okay, so it was hard to muster up the energy to care when Henry gets kidnapped or Helen ran away from her parents to go and find her brother. I liked the introduction of Helen and Henry’s aunt and uncle, but it’s only been a few weeks since I finished the book and I’ve already forgotten both of their names (the uncle may have been called Christopher?) so that shows they didn’t have a huge impact on me.

The best thing about this book is still the Tromindox, who are the scary species of bad guys that the Silverwoods are in charge of hunting. Betsy Streeter has obviously thought a lot about ways to develop the Tromindox between books one and two, and in Silver Shard the monsters are even more horrifying. The idea of one monster being able to separate into lots of little monsters to swarm their prey is horrendous; it’s certainly not a bad guy I’d ever want to come up against!

The story is left open-ended, but as it’s been five years since this book was released I’m not sure whether there will be another book in the Silverwood series which is a shame. I still feel very fondly towards the first book and I think the Tromindox is one of the most creative monsters I’ve encountered, so if you’re looking to read something which is a little tropey but also has some unique aspects then this might be the perfect series for you.

This was a little hard for me to review. I found the book to be very hard to get into through the first third with a number of gaps in the story line that I never found answers for. It gets better in the end as the story picks up but it still had me skipping sections to get to the action.
I love the story concept and the characters are well written but I would have to say this might not get much circulation in a library.