Review: My Soul to Save by Rachel Vincent

My Soul to Save (Soul Screamers, #2) by Rachel Vincent

Release Date: December 29, 2009

Publisher: Harlequin

Author Information:  Website / Blog / Twitter / Facebook

Genre: Paranormal

Available Formats: Paperback and eBook
My Shelf: Want to Buy

Other Books in Series: My Soul to Lose (#0.5), My Soul to Take (#1)
Buy the Book: Amazon / Barnes and Noble / Books-A-Million

When Kaylee Cavanaugh screams, someone dies.

So when teen pop star Eden croaks onstage and Kaylee doesn’t wail, she knows something is dead wrong. She can’t cry for someone who has no soul.

The last thing Kaylee needs right now is to be skipping school, breaking her dad’s ironclad curfew and putting her too-hot-to-be-real boyfriend’s loyalty to the test. But starry-eyed teens are trading their souls: a flickering lifetime of fame and fortune in exchange for eternity in the Netherworld—a consequence they can’t possibly understand.

Kaylee can’t let that happen, even if trying to save their souls means putting her own at risk...

Review:

Oh, my disappoint runs deep. After having loved the first book, maybe my expectations were too high for this one? Regardless, I am disappointed. I enjoyed this book, but that is about the extent of it. I have no resonant feelings or thoughts concerning the story, making My Soul to Save just….forgettable. It’s a decent read and a passable sequel, but nothing more.

I think the thing I am most dissatisfied with is the change in character personality and dynamic. Was Kaylee always that infuriating and headstrong? Did she always come across as a grating know-it-all, and this is just my first time noticing? I really liked her in the first book, but she seemed to have undergone a change for the worst in this one. Nash is much the same as before, but seeing as how I did not really care for him before says little. However, the person that changed the most was Tod. Seriously, Tod’s personality did a complete 180. What happened to his snarkiness and snubbery that I loved in the first book? Also, he never striked me as a character who would lie and risk Kaylee’s life, especially when he went out of his way to save her and her family last time. In this book, he just seemed uncaring and stubborn, and not at all like the Tod I was hoping to see more of. I was also hoping for some more reconciliation/emotional bonding moments between Kaylee and her father, but there was little to none of that either.

However, the one thing that irritated me the most in this book was Nash and Kaylee’s ‘love.’ While I never particularly cared for Kaylee and Nash’s relationship in My Soul toTake, this book quickly turned my mundane feelings for their romance into hardcore resentment and hate. There is no depth to their feelings for one another. They do not have any heartfelt discussions, no exchange of feelings. Kaylee wonders a few times what Nash wants from her and what he sees in her, and that question is never answered, which made me even more disenchanted with their ‘romance.’ They just seem like hormone-filled, lustful teenagers whose relationship only consists of (heavy) pawing at one another. For me, their relationship has become intolerable.

I also never understood why they tried so hard to save Addison. I could not see why they would risk everything, especially their lives, to save a pop star they hardly knew. She made her bed, so she should lay in it. I know it seems uncompassionate of me to say these things, but even at the end of the novel, Nash was yelling at Addison to quit thinking of herself and to get her head out of her rear. So why, WHY, WHY, would you risk your life to save someone like her? It made no sense to me, and I was not buying it.

Like I mentioned in the beginning, this book is a decent read, just not was I was expecting. (Please excuse all my ranting.) The story did have some good points, such as delving into the idea of selling your soul for fame and fortune. I also liked discovering more of the Netherworld and its components/inhabitants. I hope the next book in the series, My Soul to Keep, proves to be better than this one. I am going to try and lower my expectations this time around.

A Decent Escape