Book Review: Reaper's Novice

Good evening, today I'll be reviewing, Reaper's Novice by Cecilia Robert. It is the first book in the Soul Collector series.  I received a copy of this book for free in return for my honest review, through the Never Too Old For Y.A. Books Group on Goodreads. However, I received a copy of the book directly from the author. This in no way effects my final review of this book.

Title: Reaper's Novice

Author: Cecilia Robert

Series: Soul Collector #1

Publisher: Self-Published

Original Publication Date: January 8, 2013

Format Read: kindle

Genre: YA Paranormal

Purchase on Amazon: paperback / kindle (can borrow for free with Amazon Prime)

Find on Goodreads

Description from Goodreads:
17- year- old Ana Maria Tei’s life has always been perfect: loving parents, good grades, and a future so bright it outshone the sun. But now words like “separation” and “divorce” are sending her world plummeting to hell. Determined to keep her family intact, Ana plans a family-bonding trip from Vienna to Tuscany. Except fate has other plans. Ana’s parents and siblings are killed in a car accident on their way to pick Ana up from school.

Enter Grim, aka Ernest. He promises to relinquish the four souls if Ana agrees to trade her soul for theirs and serve a lifetime as his novice. In order for Ana to graduate from her Reaper’s Novice station to a Soul Collector graduate, Grim puts her to test. To her horror, she finds out becoming a Reaper’s Novice didn’t happen by chance. It was preordained, and she is forced to make a choice: save her family’s souls or come to terms with who she really is and complete the task set for her.

I have to say that I'm a little conflicted with this book, so I'm going to break it down by what I liked and didn't like.

What I liked:

1. The cover. Isn't it pretty? I love the position the girl is standing in, how she is holding the violin, and even how you can see her soul/aura wisping around her.

2. The premise of the story (read the description). 

3. The characters. I felt that all of the characters were pretty well rounded and fleshed out. They are all very believable with both their behavior and dialogue between one another.

4. Some of the writing and descriptions. I like how all of the different soul colors are described. I also really liked the death scenes and how the taking of the souls is described as well as all of the scenes describing where the souls are put afterwards, etc...

5. The setting of the book. This is the first book I've read that takes place in Vienna.

What I didn't like:

1. The pacing of the book. It is painfully slow and made it easy for me to put the book down. It took me about a week to read this book, when normally it takes me about 2 days to read a book like this.

2. How the author constantly withholds information that would help move the plot along. It gets pretty tedious and old after a while. I really feel the story could have benefited better with the author giving us more information sooner. I know this is the first book in the series, but not everything needed to be withheld until almost the end of the book. It was especially annoying with characters constantly pointing out that they can't give Ana that information yet.

3. Information overload. While the plot moves along slowly you are overloaded with a bunch of information. About how there are different races of people from different worlds. A war brewing. A complicated backstory as the reasoning behind the war. Worrying about friends and family and why they may be acting strange. It goes on and on. Especially towards the end when a lot of the information that the author had been holding back comes out.

4. No map. I would have really liked if this book had a map of Vienna in the beginning with some of the frequented areas marked. I really think it would have been nice. 

To summarize: 

I really liked the idea behind the story, but think it could have been executed better. Maybe an overall outline of the entire series and then breaking up the story a little different. I would have been okay with the first book ending before it ended with the information being discovered over time (not constantly put off until later). I'm clearly not a professional editor, but one might be able to help adjust the story to make it better.

Overall, I might check out the second book in the series. Especially, since I finally got answers towards the end of the first book. I would certainly expect for the second book to start off running with better pacing and with less information being purposely withheld. 

My Rating:  (Mainly because the ending finally picked up)