The Weight of Souls

author: Bryony Pearce

name: Wayne

average rating: 3.84

book published: 2013

rating: 3

read at: 2013/10/23

date added: 2013/10/23

shelves: young-adult

review:

The Weight of Souls brings a bunch of different elements together, and they somehow worked for me. You have an Asian protagonist with an ancient Egyptian curse on her. She is bullied, and manages to alienate her best friend along the way. There's the obligatory missing parent, and the perceived indifferent one that is left behind. And to top it off, she not only sees ghosts, but has to help them out against her will. That's a lot, and in other hands it might have been too much, but it worked really well here.



Taylor Oh is a sympathetic heroine who is pretty roughed up by life. Her mother's side of the family messed with an Egyptian tomb and got stuck with a curse. Taylor can see ghosts. They touch her and pass along a mark. She has to find the murderer of the ghostly one and pass off the mark before The Darkness takes her instead. And then there are all the social issues at school. The popular kids bully her at every opportunity and make her life miserable.



When one of the popular kids ends up a ghost and enlists Taylor to find out who the killer is, she is reluctantly pulled into a strange club they have and forced to do some pretty scary and brave things. She might even find a friend along the way.



It's a stand alone, but does end with some story fragments left dangling at the end. Taylor Oh is a likeable character, and so are some of the other characters in the book. I enjoyed it and would definitely read more by this author.



I received this as an ARC from Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry.





via Wayne's bookshelf: read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/638804414?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss