My Soul to Take (Soul Screamers #1)
by Rachel Vincent
Harlequin Teen, 2009
[Goodreads]
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.
This book was the March read for the YA-MA group on Goodreads, and was surprisingly a series I’d never heard of. What I liked the most about it was that it was something different from the usual faerie/vampire/werewolf/fallen angel tropes that are filling up YA paranormal genre; I found it really refreshing, and enjoyed it a lot.
Kaylee has the unique ability to sense when someone is about to die. However, this sense leaves her with the irrepressible urge to scream bloody murder, which is something she doesn’t understand, and her family won’t explain. Enter Nash, the hottest boy in school, who for some reason has set his sights on Kaylee and seems to know a lot more about her than she does herself. When girls start dropping dead for no reason, it’s up to Kaylee and Nash to figure out what’s going on, and solve the mystery of what exactly Kaylee is, and what it means for her future.
Okay, I’m going to spoil you right now regarding what she is: Kaylee is a banshee (or bean sidhe, if we’re being proper here), hence her need to wail over the dead. Probably not a spoiler, right? I guessed what she was just from reading the summary. Anyway, THAT’S why I said this was refreshing: I daresay that this is the only series featuring banshees, or at least the only one I know about. Also, the author’s mythology is pretty great, which I’m a big fan of. And it seems like she’s going to cover different aspects of the mythology in the subsequent books, which I will definitely be reading at some point.
I must say that the romance between Kaylee and Nash intrigued me, and not necessarily for good reasons. First off, I, like Kaylee, want to know exactly why Nash is drawn to her; is it because of what she is? Is it something else? This is never explained, but they sure are like magnets (and I’ll admit this flat out: the way Vincent wrote their kisses was pretty damn hot *fans self*). [SPOILER] I’m also concerned over Nash’s ability to Influence Kaylee, because this adds a bit of a creep factor for me. She’s aware of it, too, and makes mention that she probably won’t be able to stay mad at him because of it. This seems slightly dangerous, and I wonder if it will play out at all in future installments. [/SPOILER] Also, I want more Tod, because he is simply fascinating, and I want to know everything there is to know about him, especially how he came to be a Reaper. And I kind of loved Emma, Kaylee’s best friend, and want to see more of her as well, particularly now that she’s going to have to deal with what happened in this book.
All in all, this was an entertaining read, which I enjoyed from beginning to end. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
Read and Reviewed 