Book Review: Soul Cutter

*Warning: a couple of brief plot spoilers are in this review*

I won a copy of this book from another LibraryThing program that I am enrolled in called Members Giveaway. It’s sort of similar to the Early Reviewers program in that you still have to go through the list of books offered for that month’s batch and request the ones you want, but it’s different in that in some cases, the recipient has to provide a review in exchange for the book. I consider that requirement a win-win since I was going to review it anyway. lol I never request books in either of LibraryThing’s programs for funsies or leisurely reading; every book that I request from LibraryThing is for the purpose of reviewing it on here. I like both programs; there’s such a wide array of books to choose from that it would be hard not to find at least 3 books per month that you want to read. Enrollment in the program is free, just make sure that you read the description carefully and fulfill any requirements that the author may ask of you (providing a review, having a certain amount of books in your library, etc.) before requesting any copies of a book. Anyway, that’s Members Giveaway in short. Let’s move on to the book.

Soul Cutter is the debut novel by Lexa Cain. This young adult horror/romance book mainly centers around 17-year-old Elan, a young woman with a few dark secrets who debunks fake psychics and ghosts for a living. A student from the school of logic, she has no faith in the supernatural, despite the visions and dreams suggesting otherwise. When she has to travel to Egypt to find her estranged mother after she goes missing, however, the situations—and people—she encounters question and rock her beliefs in everything she thought she knew. She also meets 18-year-old Ramsey, a Lebanese boy with a few dark secrets and on a quest of his own. As the two reluctantly join forces to find Elan’s mother, they come into a few realizations about each other…and themselves…in the process. If gore isn’t for you, then neither is this book. You definitely shouldn’t eat while reading this one.

That was the closest to a synopsis that I could get without spoiling a lot of major things. I’m still tweaking how I do my book reviews, so bear with me. Anyway, this book was very fast-paced. Lots of action and intrigue, so if that’s your kind of book then Soul Cutter won’t disappoint. You think that Elan has to be in her mid-twenties or something at first because of how much mature she acts in comparison to her peers, then you find out that she’s only 17 herself. Because of the dark secret in Elan’s past, she had to grow up very quickly and this shows in the story because she’s very intelligent and unfortunately very jaded about the world and the people in it. *Brief spoiler alert*  I liked that the real feelings and fears that follow a rape victim were explored here. I hate when I read a book and even though a character is raped, she still carries on as if nothing happened, with none of the fears, thoughts or feelings that most real-life victims are unfortunately left with afterward. I also really liked that as the story progressed, Elan came into some healthy realizations about herself and despite the ever-present sense of danger lurking, she still somehow came out of the situation healed. She wasn’t a weeping willow and I appreciated that about her character, even though it clashed, as it often does, with the Middle Eastern mentality of what women should be like. 

I liked the array of characters that were in this story, although I wish they could have been explored a bit further. I think Miss Cain did a great job of employing an urban Egyptian myth and bringing it to the forefront of the story without making it overly campy. There was the normal skepticism, the normal “that’s the old folks tale” present, but over the course of the story it became larger than life as the reality that it was true came about. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the urban myth that haunted much of the book ended up falling prey to false impressions and assumptions. It goes to show that nothing’s safe from an assumption. I enjoyed that this story was as much Ramsey’s as it was Elan’s, as they both had some things to learn and accept along the way. They’re both more mature than their years and have had to learn more than a couple of ugly truths. I also liked how everything ultimately served to drive the larger plot of the story, from Ramsey’s dark secret to the disappearance of Elan’s mother, two things that would not normally have a connecting link. Yet they were both integral to the progression of the story and helped to push it along.

However, a bit of the action was so fast, it took on a bit of a frenetic pace and was a bit of everywhere. My mind would be racing to try and picture everything as I was reading it, but it had a very fast, jittery sort of energy about it. It was kind of hard to figure out exactly how much was going on at once towards the end of the book, because so much was happening all at the same time. I’d slow down just a touch in certain parts and make sure the reader’s still with the story. The story wasn’t able to progress as fluidly as it should have because it kind of jumped from place to place quite quickly. I also didn’t like the 180 flip that Elan did concerning Ramsey about halfway through the book; she went from fighting a simple attraction to him to feeling like he was her entire reason for surviving. It was a bit sudden to me. I was left with a lot of unanswered questions, so I was relieved to hear that a sequel to Soul Cutter is on the way. The battle between Ali and Ramsey felt unfinished, and I hope that’s explored further in the next book. There were a few holes in what the Soul Cutter turned out to be and the limits of his powers, something else I hope is fully resolved in the next novel. There were a few grammatical errors here and there, but they weren’t so bad that they took away from what was happening in the story. All in all, I enjoyed it and found it to be a great debut for Lexa Cain. Once I was pulled in, I was intrigued to see how everything would resolve itself. YA and horror aren't the genre I usually read, but I didn’t walk away disappointed. I look forward to the sequel of Soul Cutter. This would be safe for older teens to read as I think some of the more gory parts would be too much for tweens and younger teens. There's some cursing, but nothing sexual beyond one kiss and a bit of tension.

If you're interested in picking up this book, here's where you can get it:

Smashwords/Kindle

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