Review: With All My Soul by Rachel Vincent

by Kay | Jun 19, 2013 | Reviews | 0 comments

After spending the last year undead, Kaylee Cavanaugh has had enough of the paranormal creatures who have plagued her ever since she came into her banshee powers. Now she's ready to take her school back from the evil hellions, once and forever.

To protect her friends, Kaylee will need to find a way to turn the living incarnations of Avarice, Envy and Vanity against one another.

Yet when one more person close to her is taken, Kaylee realises she can't save everyone she loves without making some powerful sacrifices...

And so ends the Soul Screamers series. A series that quite genuinely surprised the hell out of me, delivering character development and plot turns that were utterly realistic and yet so rarely seen in the YA genre. Thank you, Rachel Vincent, for giving me a series I didn’t even know I wanted until I had it.

Let me just confirm that With All My Soul wrapped up the Soul Screamers series rather perfectly. Kaylee has spent the past six books two steps behind her enemies, but when things go from terrible to so-much-worse, she knows just reacting to attacks is not going to work. But with hellion demons being pretty much impossible to beat, and with no power or leverage to think of, what’s a girl to do? Vincent set up the perfect storm, and with it delivered the perfect solution. Every bit of Kaylee’s growth as a character culminated into her choices in this book. Book 1 Kaylee, Book 4 Kaylee and even Book 6 Kaylee would not have preserved… I love it when an author actually knows where they want a character to go – and then takes them there flawlessly. So, kudos, Rachel.

So while I loved that the series was tied up with a bow, I didn’t get the same emotional response to With All My Soul that I did from the other Soul Screamer books. Perhaps it was just me, but it felt like a lot of the “Big. Emotional. Scenes.” were ones we’d seen time and time again. Kaylee feels guilty and angsts! Nash lashes out at people who love him with unnecessarily cruel remarks! Tod and Kaylee profess their (literally) undying love! Adults randomly disappear and cause more angst! Sabine is Sabine! FEELS are meant to be HAD!

But not for me. I mean, intellectually, I understood that all of this was “Very. Important.” but it felt like a rehash of the last book, at least in terms of character interaction. Sure, the plot itself was solid, but the only real emotional development came from Kaylee – and even that was more “Oh look, Kaylee is finally stopping to think before blaming herself”. Perhaps that sounds unnecessarily harsh, but even when I enjoyed Kaylee, I could still admit her self-hatred was damn annoying.

Bottom line? This was an excellent wrap-up of a brilliant series. That said, it didn’t pack the emotional punch that I so loved in the other Soul Screamers books.

Want a copy? Click here to enter my giveaway of the book (open worldwide).

Review: My Soul to Steal by Rachel Vincent

by Kay | Feb 9, 2012 | Reviews | 0 comments

Trying to work things out with Nash—her maybe boyfriend—is hard enough for Kaylee Cavanaugh. She can't just pretend nothing happened. But "complicated" doesn't even begin to describe their relationship when his ex-girlfriend transfers to their school, determined to take Nash back.

See, Sabine isn't just an ordinary girl. She's a mara, the living personification of a nightmare. She can read people's fears—and craft them into nightmares while her victims sleep. Feeding from human fear is how she survives.

And Sabine isn't above scaring Kaylee and the entire school to death to get whatever—and whoever—she wants

Thoughts: My Soul to Steal made me want to punch things. Punch things repeatedly. And then it made me wish that Nash were real so that I might stab him in the eyes with a fork. These eyes would preferably be the automatically regrowing type so that I could continue the stabbing over and over and over and… yes. My Soul to Steal made me an angry, angry bunny. Angry on Kaylee’s behalf… hell, furious on her behalf.

I was never a big Nash fan, nor was I ever a big Nash/Kaylee fan. But this book just… gah. It really made me wish Nash dead. That said, I do think Nash is not inherently evil, he’s just madly screwed up. Rachel Vincent is an absolute genius in the sense that, yes, her characters are 100% realistic. She deals with the aftermath of drug abuse and betrayal in a heart-breakingly realistic way… but that realism? It leads to my aforementioned desire to kill her characters.

But even while I am busy plotting ways to dispose of the fictional bodies, I understand her characters. The new girl, Sabine, for example… let’s just say she’s pretty damn horrid to Kaylee. And yet, I really do get her – she’s completely open about her actions, be they good or terribly bad. Hell, half-way through this book I would have been happy if Kaylee had decided to switch sexual orientations and run off with her. And if I was choosing the main antagonist over the boyfriend? That really gives you an idea how much said boyfriend was wrong for Kaylee.

Moving away from all the interpersonal DR-A-MA, My Soul to Steal was a riot and a half. Vincent does plotty-but-serial extremely well, and this installment was just another demonstration of her ever-improving style. Had the book been more focussed on the plotty goodness, and not on all the Kaylee/Nash/Sabine business, I would be giving it 4 stars without a doubt.

Bottom line? Rachel Vincent writes the most extraordinary characters – some of them you’ll love, some you’ll want to kill, and others you’ll want to have committed. It’s great, but oh-so frustrating.

Review: My Soul to Save by Rachel Vincent

by Kay | Oct 29, 2011 | Reviews | 1 comment

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….

Thoughts: My Soul to Save makes it clear what type of series Soul Screamers is… think post-book 6 Morganville Vampire. Episodic with a monster-of-the-week. Which is cool, but you need to know that before you start reading.

I enjoyed My Soul to Save even though I can’t say it was the most, er, gripping of novels. Honestly, when I worked out that the plot was going to revolve around saving pop queens who had sold their soul for fame… well, I was more of the “they deserve what they got” school of mind. But Vincent sold the nobility of the entire scenario and the pop queens actually turned out to be pretty sweet. Thank God, really, because there is nothing worse than hating the guest star.

But while I liked Kaylee (who is super independent but not at all idiotic) and the Netherworld (creepy, to say the least), I wasn’t really moved by this book. Everything was perfectly well written, the dialogue was tight and the plot was even tighter…. but My Soul to Save just felt like it was missing something. When I pick up a new book in a series, I expect something to fundamentally change. There has to be something new, otherwise why bother writing the book? And the truth is that nothing really changes at the end of My Soul to Save – a couple of things are different, but nothing fundamental.

These complaints are really rather minor, though. So while this book might not have been the most riveting, I am expecting earth-shattering things in Rachel’s next book!

Bottom line? Great YA series, good installment. Pick up the Soul Screamers series if you want something different-yet-familiar in your paranormal YA.