Scan barcode
A review by wickedlovely
My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent
3.0
I read the first book in Rachel Vincent’s urban fantasy series, “Shifters” a few years ago. I was not impressed, nor did I feel the urge to give it another try. But when I found out she’d written an urban fantasy YA series from friends on Goodreads, I figured, why not?
Kaylee Cavanaugh is a junior in high school who has felt the urge to scream uncontrollably on a few occasions, which she believes are panic attacks. Living with her seemingly oblivious aunt and uncle and her popular cousin, she feels like a total outcast. That is, until she bumps into Nash Hudson during a night out with her friend Emma at a dance club. It is there, on possibly the best night of her life that she feels the urge to scream again. She knows the girl gyrating on the dance floor is going to die. She can feel it in her body, in her soul and most importantly, in her lungs. When she confesses this to Nash, he doesn’t freak out. He doesn’t call her a loser. He not only believes her but helps her keep her cool. What follows is Kaylee’s quest to find out what exactly she is and what that means for her future.
While this book didn’t knock my socks off, I did enjoy it to a certain extent. It was fascinating discovering about Kaylee’s origins. I enjoyed reading about her aunt, uncle, cousin and father. In the beginning, they seem like the typical family but you quickly learn that there is a lot more beneath the surface. Kaylee and Nash’s investigation into how & why their classmates were dying had me on the edge of my seat. I do wish that there was more time spent on the Irish folklore & that Nash wasn’t always so quick to come to the rescue. I was also a little disconcerted by how quickly his and Kaylee’s relationship progressed. There was an explanation as to why but I still felt like I got whiplash from Insta-love.
Aside from that, my biggest issue was with Kaylee herself. She was not a character I liked being stuck in the head of. For someone to have gone through what she did-there’s a stay at a mental hospital in her past, among other things-she came off as a petulant child. It seemed like she was stuck on two settings: irate and confused. When she didn’t get her way, she had a fit, yelling and glaring all over the place. When the people who loved her warned her about things, she not only ignored their advice but accused them of hiding things from her and not caring enough about the innocent. To be honest, I’d hide things from her too since all she did was halfway listen and run off with the information like Super Girl Gone Emo. There were way too many times while reading this book that I wanted to smack the crap out of Kaylee for thinking she could handle things she had no real understanding of. She definitely brought this book down a few grades.
Overall, I thought this was a decent YA novel. The ending was amazing. I totally did not see those new developments coming. Kaylee has the potential to be a great heroine if she would just shut the hell up and listen. If she manages to accomplish that, the places her revelations about herself could take her could make this series very entertaining.
Kaylee Cavanaugh is a junior in high school who has felt the urge to scream uncontrollably on a few occasions, which she believes are panic attacks. Living with her seemingly oblivious aunt and uncle and her popular cousin, she feels like a total outcast. That is, until she bumps into Nash Hudson during a night out with her friend Emma at a dance club. It is there, on possibly the best night of her life that she feels the urge to scream again. She knows the girl gyrating on the dance floor is going to die. She can feel it in her body, in her soul and most importantly, in her lungs. When she confesses this to Nash, he doesn’t freak out. He doesn’t call her a loser. He not only believes her but helps her keep her cool. What follows is Kaylee’s quest to find out what exactly she is and what that means for her future.
While this book didn’t knock my socks off, I did enjoy it to a certain extent. It was fascinating discovering about Kaylee’s origins. I enjoyed reading about her aunt, uncle, cousin and father. In the beginning, they seem like the typical family but you quickly learn that there is a lot more beneath the surface. Kaylee and Nash’s investigation into how & why their classmates were dying had me on the edge of my seat. I do wish that there was more time spent on the Irish folklore & that Nash wasn’t always so quick to come to the rescue. I was also a little disconcerted by how quickly his and Kaylee’s relationship progressed. There was an explanation as to why but I still felt like I got whiplash from Insta-love.
Aside from that, my biggest issue was with Kaylee herself. She was not a character I liked being stuck in the head of. For someone to have gone through what she did-there’s a stay at a mental hospital in her past, among other things-she came off as a petulant child. It seemed like she was stuck on two settings: irate and confused. When she didn’t get her way, she had a fit, yelling and glaring all over the place. When the people who loved her warned her about things, she not only ignored their advice but accused them of hiding things from her and not caring enough about the innocent. To be honest, I’d hide things from her too since all she did was halfway listen and run off with the information like Super Girl Gone Emo. There were way too many times while reading this book that I wanted to smack the crap out of Kaylee for thinking she could handle things she had no real understanding of. She definitely brought this book down a few grades.
Overall, I thought this was a decent YA novel. The ending was amazing. I totally did not see those new developments coming. Kaylee has the potential to be a great heroine if she would just shut the hell up and listen. If she manages to accomplish that, the places her revelations about herself could take her could make this series very entertaining.