Not another book review - My Soul to Take, Rachel Vincent

Just as a side note, I really don't like this cover. The US one is a bit weird too though, so I'm not sure which I prefer. The UK covers for the rest of the series are very pretty though. And incidentally, slapping the word Twilight onto every YA book going is a bit of a cheat.

Anyway. I originally read the free ebook prequel to this story a year or so ago, and loved it. It seemed like a really new concept, and I'm a sucker for banshees. Despite that, it's taken me this long to get round to actually reading My Soul To Take (and I won't lie, part of that is that I find the very similar titles for the series as a whole quite confusing and wasn't sure where to start, but that's my stupidity). So I was really looking forward to this book, especially as I love Vincent's Shifter books so much.

And I did like it, I really did. But it didn't grab me quite the same way the prequel did. I like Kaylee. I like the banshee mythology. I like that it is quite different from other YA I've read. But I didn't love it and I can't quite put my finger on why. Vincent is an amazing, visceral writer, and maybe that raw emotion that powers the Shifter books was a bit muted here? It was only towards the end that I felt we were really seeing Kaylee, and before that she was simply going through the motions. I don't know if this was a deliberate choice by Vincent - Kaylee is smart and erudite, but obviously a wallflower, very much used to keeping her emotions bottled up. This made her more outspoken behaviour later in the book very striking, but it also meant I felt like I never got to know Kaylee until the last minute.

I get the sense there's a lot more to learn about all the characters in the book though; not just Kaylee. Tod and Nash will be ones to watch, and I really liked Harmony. Emma felt like a bit of a blank slate, but as she wasn't really a major player in the plot, I didn't mind that so much. I'm sure she'll be fleshed out in the sequel (which I do plan to buy).

In all, I think I maybe unfairly (and subconsciously) compared My Soul To Take to Vincent's Shifter books whilst reading, and of course they're going to be completely different! But it's still Rachel Vincent, so it's still a good book, it just didn't quite live up to the promise of the prequel. I will buy the second in the series at some point, but there are other books taking priority right now!