My Soul to Take - Rachel Vincent

My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent
Genre: YA Fantasy

Blurb (on back of book): She doesn't see dead people. 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 OPINION: **

I was looking at reviews of this book and I was surprised to see how many people loved it and how many people hated it. It was really nicely split, which I appreciated because I could see both sides of the spectrum.

I really wanted to love this book. I kept going with it because I've heard a lot of nice things about it and Goodreads recommended it to me. However, there were so many problems with it that it ended up being "just ok" which is what GR classifies 2-stars as.

CHARACTERS
As a whole, I thought all of them were very undeveloped and one-dimensional. I didn't see any exceptional qualities about any of them that gave them any personality. Honestly, if we're being blunt here, a lot of them were really stupid in general and that really made me annoyed because I like the smarter characters when reading.

Kaylee was already not the brightest character but by meeting Nash, they became stupider together. At some point, they kill an innocent girl to save another girl's life. Yes, I understand that they were trying to do a good deed but they knew somebody was going to die and didn't think to do anything about it. Also, at one point in the book, Kaylee can't even recognize her best friend, which really annoyed me. Yes, I understand that she was going crazy in her banshee mode thing but that doesn't mean that she shouldn't represent her BEST FRIEND. I mean, they're best friends for a reason, right?

The father really annoyed me. His story about why he abandoned his own daughter was really stupid and was not an excuse to abandon your kid. It felt more like "I don't want to take care of my daughter because I'm lost in grief and I'm just going to make up any excuse possible"

PLOT/SETTING
I thought this whole book was fairly predictable. Nothing really surprised me, except for the plot twist at the end (honestly, I read the last half of this book in a sort of daze because I just couldn't believe how disinterested I was). I'm not saying that it was bad but there were just points where I wanted to skip a couple of pages to get it over with faster. I think it was a little cliche at points but there were points that made me want to read and then there were points that made me want to quit.

ROMANCE
Um, it kind of just started out of nowhere. Like, hey, I just met this random guy, and BOOM we're kissing! I was really confused at the pacing of Nash and Kaylee's relationship. It was just too fast and on top of that, it didn't feel real. The scenes between them didn't make me feel anything like good novels do. I don't know how to explain it but it really disappointed me.

So apparently this is a seven-book series. I'm thinking about giving the second book a try and if it goes downhill from there, I'll stop reading. I would recommend this book to people looking for a shorter fantasy book.

Main Character: Kaylee
Sidekick(s): Nash
Villain(s): The bad reaper, etc
Fantasy Elements: This book was based on fantasy characters and elements.