Soul Catcher by Leigh Bridger
The Outsider series book 1
ISBN: 9780982175682
I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Readers program.
Warning: I am rating this book DNF.
The premise has potential, Livvie is a Soul Catcher, gifted with the power to magically summon demons via painting them then banishing them by burning the painting. She is also a multi-reincarnated soul who is haunted by a soul mate and a demon who refuses to let them be together.
In execution though the book fails on nearly every level. Livvie is a character straight out of addict recovery show, rambling about relatively unimportant things one minute, setting up scenes the next only to ramble some more and finally update the reader on what they missed while she was rambling. It’s like the author and character have teamed up to avoid actually showing the story. Not to mention Livvie’s horrible drug use is more like Tylenol PMs and wine.
Apparently in the first few scenes Livvie dreams of Pig Face, the demon who has been killing herself and her soul mate for countless lives. Instead of burning the painting the painting flies out of Livvie’s hands in a sudden and fortuitous gust of wind. This of course means Pig Face escapes the painting. However the only way I knew that this is what happened, and that it was a major plot event, is because I read other reviews that explained this. These “major events” are written in a style that makes them seem convoluted, utterly unimportant and routine.
Pig Face apparently possesses the body of a man Livvie shows interest in, gains her trust after a few exchanged lines of dialog and leads her outside where he beats her and rapes her. The actual action (not that I’m eager to read that scene) is all off screen and only explained after a chapter break in brief retrospect, much like all the action in this book so far.
Livvie receives aid from her landlords, who, as Livvie is barely conscious, sum up everything that’s happened so far in the book (apparently they are all-knowing NPCs) in explanation to each other. These two go on to call what happened to Livvie “a downer” and explain that they are some sort of soul friends who know all about her, what she is, and who Pig Face and Ian are too. Rather than taking Livvie to a hospital to, you know check for brain damage and internal injuries, they just stitch her up themselves in their spare bedroom.
The hot mess of a plot continues to ramble on, with more actual on screen scenes, that don’t make much more sense, until about fifty pages in when Pig Face attacks Livvie again (in a police station, with a bunch of cops nearby, where they were accusing her of killing a guy she worked with, who killed himself in public, and who had no other link to her). Only this time Livvie calls to Ian (who I’m assuming is haunting her) for help and Ian ends up possessing the body Pig Face raped Livvie with.
I gave up on this book not much after, when more rambling started. I personally despise rape-as-romance plots. No amount of this style of writing or these flat characters was going to redeem this book for me, especially if it continued to spend the next two hundred pages alternating between “Livvie is crazy”, “Pig Face is brutally and gorily attacking everyone she’s ever known” and “Livvie needs to trust this guy who raped her in the second chapter because they are true loves”.
This book was just too convoluted, with Livvie’s completely unlikable nature, Pig Face’s cruel torturous slaughter for no reason other than he could, and the constant distractions from every ghost, animal, “boon” and spirit talking to Livvie (seriously, two spirits in the form of flies tried to protect her by buzzing around a cop’s head to distract him). The world building is so confusing I never had any solid picture of the characters, the places, or even the rules of the magical world. I cannot recommend this book, because I cannot think of a single avid reader that I know of who would find it an exciting, enjoyable read.