Our
Souls to Keep
by
Gary A. Caruso
Publication
Date: April 11th 2013
Publisher:
Inertia Publishing
Source: Author
Source: Author
Find
This Book: Our Souls to Keep
Rating:
3/5
I was provided a copy
of this book by the author in exchange for an honest review.
The concept of this
book revolves around the rules of Heaven and Hell. Particularly around the idea
that Heaven and Hell work together and that Satan picks up God’s “trash”.
Anyone who commits murder or suicide goes to hell and the tortures included.
With the depression and suicide we see in society I thought this was a bit
distasteful, but it made for an interesting notion. Even the purest soul will
be tainted and damned just because they took their own life. This brings us to
the plot of our story. Demons go around manipulating people into taking their
own life in order to collect their souls for Satan. A demon named Nevin
collected Wake’s (our main character) mother’s soul and Wake made a deal with
the demon to kill himself in exchange for his mother’s soul’s safety. This
leads us to Wake the half human half demon collecting other human’s souls for
Satan in order to keep his mother safe. However, the game completely changes
when he falls in love with his biggest target yet. Annemarie, the pregnant girl
with a sacred child.
Keep in mind that I
was not originally drawn to the story, however I certainly found myself
enjoying it even with my criticism below.
One thing I didn’t
particularly like but didn’t really affect the story too much was how quickly
Wake reverted back to acting like a human. He’d had all memories taken away
from him as well as human emotions, but at the slightest doubt in his contract
he started acting human again? I think it would have been better if Wake was
swamped by the emotional overload and struggled between the human that he was
and the demon life he has now. Instead it seemed more like a “whelp, I’m human
now and my mother can’t be saved so I’m just going to let her rot in the fiery
pits of hell while I fall in love and try to live my own life, no biggie.” It
just seems like he made these huge life-changing decisions too fast and never
looked back to doubt his choice.
The description in this
book was quite interesting to say the least. For example, the “sunset clouds
thick like boiling carrot soup”. I’ve never had carrot soup so I can’t testify
how thick it is but comparing clouds to soup to begin with I just found odd,
but in a good way. Descriptions like so led to a certain unique charm.
Another good
quality of the book was its humor. The budding friendship between Wake and the
angel Gabriel was quite amusing and gave the book a little hope. Even with the
heaven/hell battle happening in the background the character’s had their light-hearted
cute scenes as well. Our Souls to Keep had a Romeo & Juliet feel to it,
including an unnecessary (in my opinion) romantic scene right before the
climax. About to be attacked by demons, Annemarie and Wake decide to have their
first kiss? They need to straighten their priorities.
Lastly, I want to
brush on the topic of character development. While I thought some of Wake’s
decisions were a bit rushed, his character and defining personality were well
thought out and developed. Satan, Nevin and Wake seemed to be the only
characters who weren’t shallow. Everyone else only made extremely brief
appearances to aid Wake or give him important information before they died
(Wake’s brother and the girl hunter for example). There were so many minor
characters killed off I can’t even tell you all of their names. Yes, it’s a demon-killing
book, but as a reader I can’t become attached and car about somebody dying when
they’ve only been on a couple pages. The same thing happening multiple times
just made it kind of bland. Annemarie wasn’t as bad, but her constant description
was being innocent and pure. I just wish we’d gotten to see more about her and
her backstory instead of her just being a pure love interest for a damned
demon.
So overall, the
novel had a great concept, the writer had an interesting writing style, but it just
seemed under developed. I would have liked more depth to the characters and
plot, but it was a fine read the way it was.