Soul Catcher by E.L. Todd
3 out of 5 Stars
Hmmm…so I’m writing this review before I decide the number of stars to give it because, honestly, I just don’t know. Right off the bat, I’ll tell you that I’ll be buying the second book. I want to know what happens and I’m invested enough in the characters that I need to know what happens.
I guess I’ll start with what I didn’t like.
There were some unfortunate info dumps using confusing past and presence tenses that called attention to a few of them. They were short and contained information that I honestly forgot. I tend to glaze over paragraphs reciting world history when there’s no dialog or sensory additions that keep me focused. That being said, they were pretty brief.
A lot of information was redundant. A. Lot. I think what made this so blatant was the fact that the character POV shifted within a paragraph. It’s a head-hopper. As I’ve said before, I really, and I mean REALLY, enjoy multiple character POVs. What I don’t like is when it hops from sentence to sentence between characters, which happened in this book. It never grounds me to a scene, and this book was no exception. One minute we’re hearing the thoughts of a character which are generally reciprocated in the next sentence by another character. Then repeated a few paragraphs later.
There were some odd analogies. Like second hands on a clock, a pressured hose. It didn’t seem to fit with the time period and kinda threw me off a couple times.
Here’s something that doesn’t bother me, but thought I would share with people who are thinking of picking this book up: there is rape, there is sex.
Now, what I liked.
The characters themselves did not blow me away, but I really cared what happened to them. Aleco is a tormented man, which immediately draws me to him. I like characters with horrific pasts, and Aleco gives me that character. I wish the book would have had more slower scenes so we could get to know them better. Perhaps even more interaction with other characters, more dialog. Not to say I don’t know Aleco’s character well, but I wanted…something more in depth. Accacia was a character that sloshed from emotion to emotion. I didn’t have a problem with her until about half way through the book. I didn’t like her actions towards Aleco and it turned me off from her.
Some of the descriptions were a little flat, but other times they blew me away. There were times when Todd described physical sensations that were nothing shy of brilliant. I felt myself aching in sympathy. Love that!
The plot was nothing new or earth-shattering, but I found myself enjoying it. Besides one too many flashbacks, it moved along fine for my taste.
Now that I’ve written this, I’ve decided to go with 3 stars on Goodreads, 4 on Amazon because of their different meanings. I like this books. And, as I said, I will be buying the next one.
