Review: My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent

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…

Right after reading My Soul to Lose, the prequel to the Soul Screamers series, the personality of Kaylee Cavanaugh prepared me for kind of series I was getting into. So I expected the first book to be a slightly clichéd but an overall refreshing series. However, I do have few issues with how the story progressed. 

First off, there is a slight mention of Kaylee’s fellow high school footballer in the prequel. Apparently, Kaylee’s social circle is next to non-existent and Nash is the incrowd. Why am I not surprised? Moreover, he develops a rather sudden interest in Kaylee because of what she is. I am not liking this at all now. 

So that’s where it is made clear that Kaylee, unbeknownst to herself, is beautiful and even though Nash is somewhat of a womanizer, he’s totally into her. Therefore, there is a lot of sexual tension between them all the time. And that would have been totally fine, if not for the looming factor that they both belong to the same species and so, everything is intensified for them including the sexual tension…well, maybe.

Moving onto Nash Hudson, I liked him, he didn’t act like a jerk, got jealous at the right moments and isn’t in lieu of anything bad actually. Plus, he was all over Kaylee when she needed him to help her. In short, there was nothing much unlikable about him and he seems like the perfect guy for Kaylee. I liked his take on things as well, even though he seemed to be (slightly creepy) calm than other people in stressful situations. But that could totally be because of the Influence.

The character of Tod however, has more of that perpetual scowling and frowning going on. He seems to have more depth than Nash at certain moments in the book but he is really just more prone to sulkiness than Nash. I can’t really say much about him but, I would say this that he is a lost soul and still trying to find his place in the world despite his status as a grim reaper.

Even though the characters had depth and there was apparent growth as the story progressed, there were some things I couldn’t quite get acquainted to. Like the whole system isn’t much organized even though they are talking about death which should be much more than it is shown to be in the book. It was also somewhat distracting to read the book knowing that Emma, the BFF, was grounded for more than half of it and so couldn’t talk to Kaylee when she was busy adjusting to the fact that she’s not human. What kind of grounded is that, anyway?

On a side note, thank the Lord that bean sidhes do age, by the way, however slow that process might be. Moving on, there was a lot of fresh dialogue and witty thoughts from Kaylee going on. The book also had its serious parts as well, so much that I found it emotional towards the end. I will be continuing the series and I hope it gets better as it has potential to be so.

“The problem with getting everything you want in life is that you’re not prepared for disappointment when it comes.”