Review by Lauren - My Soul to Take

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…

I don't think I should have liked My Soul to Take. If you had explained the premise of it to me, I don't think I would have picked it up. Thankfully, the description (as posted above), is not incredibly revealing.

But I'm glad I did :)

There was a bit of a lack of subtetly in the novel. I know it's alright to have the "ooo I know something's up" but there seemed to be a lot of it and I managed to figure stuff out that I didn't want to.

So the first thing we find out is that there is this (popular) boy, Nash, who Kaylee meets in a club (that she snuck into), who is with her when she starts to... freak out. He somehow calms her down before she can start shrieking and whatnot. Which already was like "Alright, Mr. Popular is special." Well then Kaylee finds out that she is a bean sidhe - I won't tell you how. I'll try not to spoil it - AKA a banshee. Yeah. It's irish for she-faerie, which, when I read it, almost made me pee my pants with excitement because I'm extra cool and am trying to teach myself Irish in my spare time. Out of the 10 words I happen to know, bean is one of them. How sad. Sidhe, I knew from the 50 other YA faerie novels out there.

SO I was all like "OMG WOMAN FAERIE!! I'M SO SMART!". Even as I pronounced it properly (ban shee), I failed to make the connection between the irish she-faerie and an actual banshee until they blantantly explained it in the book. Which made me feel a little stupid. Kaylee was like "What I'm a banshee?" and I'm thinking "Oh Kaylee, you are stupid. You're not a banshee. You're a she-faerie :):)" and then the other person is like "yeah. That's not ACTUALLY how it should be spelled. It's taken from the Irish." and then I just felt stupid. Because she completely exhibits signs of being a banshee... I mean, come on, she screams when people are about to die.

Wow. Ramble. Sorry if you're confused - Alex said it makes sense so go blame her.

But I really enjoyed the book, despite the fact that it tried to toss supernatural craziness into normal, everyday life. I usually cannot stand that at all - just create me an alternate universe please - but I survived. There was some nice romantic bits, throughout the novel, which was nice. Like I mentioned at the beginning though, there was a big shocker that I figured out much earlier on in the novel - it was hinted but I don't know if anyone else would notice - just by choice of word. I'm pretty sure it was intentional, but personally, I prefer shocker moments to ones that you know are coming. And I can smell a love triangle.

If you happen to have read My Soul to Take, and are interested in the prequel, My Soul to Lose, a free e-book can be found here. Personally, I am not interested in reading it (just because I know the plot and it doesn't interest me), but it's short. I am very excited about the upcoming sequel though :)

4.5/6

♥Lauren