Review: Great YA Paranormal with a bit of romance and a great mystery, lots of dark twists.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 10, 2013
This is a paranormal romance thankfully in the YA genre.  I've seen some reviews refer to the beings in the afterlife in this book as angels, but the author is fairly careful of not calling them angels. I liked that about this book as I'm not a huge fan of angels. (Except Patch). So I really had no idea what this book was about when I started reading except from what the synopsis says which is a bit vague.The characters- Maggie is the one we see the story through and she's a bit cold at first. She's been a soul collector for at least 100 years so most of her humanity is gone. It's only natural that she seems detached as she goes about her job. But in a somewhat contradictory move, she is training the youngest of the soul collectors, children, despite her lack of humanity. Of course, that's what makes her the best soul collector. Still it doesn't seem that she'd be exactly nurturing with kids that have to collect souls and match them with their True Souls, a frightening task I would think for a child. But when Maggie is sucked into Ally's body she has to pretend to be her and has a crash course in being human again. She has feelings and memories that she's lacked for 100 years. And she has a complicated relationship with one of the guards, Cooper, who had been watching over Ally since she was born.There are other characters but even naming them will give too much away.The world-  This is my one problem with the novel. I felt lost in the After Life world. There is very little world building and while I don't like to waste a lot of time with that, I do need some of it for some understanding. I did not get the concept of the True Soul. (It's explained in my interview with the author). I didn't understand what Maggie and Cooper's world looked like. How were they chosen? Did they do anything for fun? If they did have relationships, what did they do? Is there marriage in the after life? Some things though were explained really well. I knew they didn't have to eat and how the guards could transport anywhere anytime while Soul Collectors were more limited in their travel. So it just wasn't completely fleshed out for me. I felt like there were a lot of holes or just skimmed over.The plot- I think the plot was really interesting and though not really deep, it had some great surprises and some really dark twists to it at the end. I figured who the villain was pretty early on but the other surprises were not expected at all. Maggie's past was a huge shock and something that will definitely compel me to read the next novel in the series. Plus, there were some really interesting characters that I want to follow and see where the story goes.What I thought- I guess I kind of said it all in the plot up there. I think it was a little lacking in the world building but the plot was good with twists and a darkness I didn't expect. The characters ran the gamut from being well developed to just well enough fleshed out to make you want to know more. There was a good mix of humans and after life people that it didn't feel too supernatural. The romance was light and I'd actually say this would be a great beach read. It's fast and light enough you can read it in an afternoon. And that cover kind of screams BEACH READ!I received a copy of this novel from the author for review. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.