MY SOUL TO TAKE Review - Rachel Vincent

MY SOUL TO TAKE by Rachel Vincent
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Pages: 279
ISBN#: 0373210035
My Recommended Age Group: Young Adult
Released: August 1, 2009
Other YA work: My Soul to Lose (Prequel), My Soul to Save (Book 2), My Soul to Keep (Book 3 - June 1, 2010)

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From Goodreads:

She doesn't see dead people, but…

She senses when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

Kaylee just wants to enjoy having caught the attention of the hottest guy in school. But a normal date is hard to come by when Nash seems to know more about her need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only Kaylee knows who'll be next…

My thoughts:

It’s always fascinating to me when an author decides to write in a genre that he or she is not best known for. My recent experience with this is Rachel Vincent and MY SOUL TO TAKE, the first in the Soul Screamers series. I became acquainted with Vincent when I read her Shifters books, quickly falling in love with Faythe and the gang. I was excited and nervous to see what she would come up with in the Young Adult genre, seeing as how her “adult” books are so fabulous.

I was definitely not disappointed!

MY SOUL TO TAKE was a fantastic and very quick read. Kaylee seems like your typical teenage girl on the outside, but something much more complex lies beneath her calm exterior. After the death of her mother and abandonment of her father, Kaylee has grown up living with her aunt, uncle and very bratty cousin. If the difficult family dynamic wasn’t enough, Kaylee has been plagued with panic attacks. Or at least that’s what she thought they were.

Kaylee can sense death. As a bean sidhe (banshee) she has the ability to sense when a person’s imminent death is upon them. Sounds like a great skill; she could warn those about to die and perhaps allow them to spend their last few moments saying goodbye to their family (or more realistically in a massive state of panic). The only problem is that as soon as she senses the death, the only thing she can do is scream. Discovering who she is and what her special abilities really mean will be a journey, but when Kaylee’s classmates start dropping like flies she has to learn to work with her abilities and discover the truth behind a potentially devious scheme.

Vincent has created an incredible new series with MY SOUL TO TAKE. The magic in the story was darker than the normal whimsy we see in many Young Adult books. This led to an additional layer of depth to the story that made it undeniably wonderful. In addition, Kaylee was a very likable character. Her personality was realistic and fortunately she wasn’t overly angsty. It would have been easy to write her as a “woe-is-me” character, but instead, Vincent instilled the same female strength that she gives other kick-butt females in her stories as well as a little softness.

When introducing a new concept to readers, I think some authors tend to go overboard on explaining their justifications for the new world. Instead of bogging us down with the details, Vincent let us explore this new reality as the story progressed. MY SOUL TO TAKE definitely incorporated some new elements that I haven’t seen in other stories, but did so in a natural way.

Writing: 9
Interest: 10
Passion: 10
Originality: 10
Characters: 10
Pace: 9
Overall: 58/60 - A

Book Cover: 3/3

If you couldn’t tell by now, I absolutely loved MY SOUL TO TAKE. If I already had it at my disposal, I would have begun My Soul to Save immediately after this book. I am excited to bury myself back in the story and see what else Vincent has for us.