We are having a party today!

Soul Screamers is a series that follows Banshee Kaylee Cavanaugh as she finds out the extent of her powers and why she screams when someone is about to die.

Something is wrong with Kaylee Cavanaugh. She doesn’t see dead people, but…

She senses when someone near her is about to die. And when that happens, a force beyond her control compels her to scream bloody murder. Literally.

Kaylee just wants to be a normal girl, basking in the joy of having caught the attention of Nash, the hottest guy in school. But getting through a first date isn’t easy when he seems to know more about Kaylee’s need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only she knows who’ll be next…

Ana reviewed (and loved) the first book, My Soul to Take last year and you can read her review here as well as read a guest post by the author on her inspirations for writing the book.

And book 2, My Soul To Save has been released in early January:

When teen pop star Eden croaks on stage and Kaylee doesn’t wail, she knows something is dead wrong. She can’t cry for someone who has no soul.

The last thing Kaylee needs right now is to be skipping school, breaking her dad’s ironclad curfew and putting her too-hot-to-be-real boyfriend’s loyalty to the test. But starry-eyed teens are trading their souls for a flickering lifetime of fame and fortune in exchange for eternity in the Netherworld—a consequence they can’t possibly understand.

Kaylee can’t let that happen, even if trying to save their souls means putting her own at risk.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

To one lucky winner: One copy of both books in the Soul Screamers series: My Soul To Take and My Soul To Save

Plus two additional winners can win one copy of book 2 in the series, My Soul to Save!

In order to enter all you have to do is to leave a comment on this post telling us what is your favorite YA series at the moment and why. The contest is open to everybody and will run till February 15th 11:59pm (Pacific). GOOD LUCK!

Rachel Vincent is a popular UF novelist, author of the Shifter series. Her first book in her new Young Adult Soul Screamer series has just hit the shelves and Ana reviewed it here. We invited the author to be part of our YA Appreciation Month by writing a piece on her Inspiration to write the series.

Please say hello to Rachel Vincent:

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Hey Book Smugglers! Thanks for having me!

You want to know what inspired my YA debut, My Soul to Take? That’s easy enough. The main character, Kaylee Cavanaugh. Who Kaylee is and what she can do—those are the things that inspired and shaped her story. So what was my inspiration for creating Kaylee herself? That one’s not such a simple answer.

Kaylee was inspired by the girl I was in high school, and by the girl I could never have been, even if I’d had her abilities.

Kaylee is a bit of a dichotomy. On one hand, she’s a normal high school junior. She’s neither beautiful nor ugly. She isn’t popular, but she neither is she a pariah. She’s bright, but not at the top of her class. In short, she doesn’t stand out in the crowd, and that’s fine with her because Kaylee has a very serious problem. She gets panic attacks that make her scream at the top of her lungs, filled with the grim certainty that someone near her is going to die. Very soon. And if she had to choose between standing out as a total freak or blending in with the background, Kaylee would gladly fade into the wallpaper anytime.

But in spite of her perceived normalness, though she doesn’t know it yet at the beginning of the book, Kaylee is a bean sidhe (the proper spelling for banshee). Her panic attacks are really premonitions of death. And that’s only half the story.

What does this mean for Kaylee? That she doesn’t fit in anywhere. She’s more human (thus more defenseless) than most of the other non-human species she’s about to discover, but not quite human enough to truly fit in at school. Especially once classmates start dropping dead and Kaylee is compelled to wail for them.
Obviously, the human half of Kaylee is the bit that was inspired in part by my own experiences blending into the walls of my high school. But the part of herself Kaylee discovers in this first book—aside from the whole being-a-bean-sidhe-thing—that’s the girl I never could have been. Kaylee is determined and compassionate, even on behalf of classmates she truly doesn’t like. She is courageous in the face of true danger. She faces down death repeatedly—and literally. She has guts, and brains, and a mind of her own.

And with any luck, that and a few good friends will be enough to get her through those last two years of high school, no matter what this brave new Netherworld throws at her.

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Rachel Vincent is the author of the Shifters series, about a werecat named Faythe Sanders, who is learning to define her own role in her family and fighting to claim a place in her Pride.

Rachel’s young adult debut, My Soul to Take, will hit the shelves on August 1, 2009. My Soul to Take is the first in the Soul Screamers series, about a teenage bean sidhe (banshee) trying to balance a normal high school experience with the terrifying, hidden world she’s just discovered.

A recent transplant into the deep south, Rachel Vincent has a BA in English and an overactive imagination, and consistently finds the latter to be more practical. She shares her workspace with two black cats (Kaci and Nyx) and her # 1 fan. Rachel is older than she looks-seriously-and younger than she feels, but remains convinced that for every day she spends writing, one more day will be added to her lifespan.

Thanks to Rachel for her post and now, for the giveaway! We are giving away ONE copy of My Soul to Take to a lucky reader!

The contest is open to EVERYONE, and will run until Saturday August 15th at 11:59 PM. We’ll announce the winner on Sunday during our weekly stash. In order to enter, simply leave a comment here.

Title: My Soul to Take

Author: Rachel Vincent

Genre: YA – Fantasy/Romance

Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publishing date: August 1, 2009
Paperback: 384 pages

Stand Alone or series: It is the first full length novel in the Soul Screamers series. The author also released a novella called My Soul to Lose, which is a prequel to the series and you can download for FREE here

Summary: Something is wrong with Kaylee Cavanaugh. She doesn’t see dead people, but…

Kaylee just wants to be a normal girl, basking in the joy of having caught the attention of Nash, the hottest guy in school. But getting through a first date isn’t easy when he seems to know more about Kaylee’s need to scream than she does. And when classmates start dropping dead for no apparent reason, only she knows who’ll be next…

Why did I read the book: I heart Banshees! Plus, the cover is totally lush – although, the girl should be, could be, you know, screaming!

Review:

Kaylee Cavanaugh is, on the surface, just you regular teenage girl: the kind that sneaks out of the house to go clubbing with her best friend Emma, for example. And who gets really excited when popular boy-athlete Nash asks her to dance. Unfortunately for Kaylee, this is when her deeply-buried secret decides to show its ugly face. They dance away, and then Kaylee starts to experience what she has been led to believe are panic attacks, which begin with overwhelming feelings of grief and melancholy followed by an urge to scream and scream and scream. This has happened before and the last time, the attack caused damage to glass and to the people around her and lasted for such a long time that her family saw fit to send her to a mental institution. Her brief institutionalizing had left its marks and Kaylee will do anything to avoid being sent there again – even if she has to contain a scream that wants out, at her own expense.

This time, the attack is triggered as she gets a glimpse of a girl who seems immersed in shadows but just when she is about to let go of the building scream, Nash takes her outside and manages to soothe her. The panic passes and she goes home. The next morning, she finds out that the girl has collapsed and died on the dance floor. Just like that – and now Kaylee thinks that she somehow predicted that death, a belief that becomes stronger when another teenage girl collapses and die at school, following a similar pattern: Kalyee feels the grief, the melancholy, the need to scream and then sees the shadow-engulfed girl. And again, Nash is around to calm her whilst at the same time being inexplicably at ease with the circumstances.

That raises questions: why is he being so nice to her? He is a popular jock ,a non-player that seems to go out with a lot of girls. Why the sudden interest? Does he have an agenda?

What Nash really is, is the most straight-forward person in her life. When everybody else – her uncle and aunt who have raised her; her father, who lives away and rarely visits – seems to be keeping secrets, Nash is the one person who will not lie to her. And the truth is that Kaylee is not human: she is a Bean Sidhe (or as it sounds, Banshee) – and so is he.

Traditionally speaking, Banshees are Irish female fairies who can predict death – and their scream is their mourning call. In My Soul To Take, Rachel Vincent takes the legend and makes it her own, departing from tradition and expanding the myth by not only creating a male counterpart, with different and less public powers hence their complete absence from the stories (wink, wink, Ms Vincent, well done) and by giving a larger purpose to her banshees: as Nash explains to Kaylee, her scream is a soul song that can keep the souls around, enough for them to say goodbye. His complementing power is to be able to direct the souls. A male and a female Banshee together, could potentially be really powerful if it wasn’t for their enemies, the Rippers and the Natural Order of Things – when it’s time for a person to go, nothing should stop it unless you are prepared to deal with the harsh consequences.

But Nash and Kaylee suspect that these kids who are dying and not supposed to, and they start to investigate and this path leads them to danger and to the powerful climax.

The story flows rather nicely from the Kaylee’s first suspicions about her powers to hers and Nash process of finding out what the heck is going on. The plot involving the Reapers, the Banshees and the dying girls was really interesting but to me, what makes this book is Kaylee’s journey of self –discovery. It is impossible not to sympathise with the girl, from her extreme fear of being really crazy to her relief at finding out that she isn’t, even if that means that she is not human; and then having to come to grips with powers that are both horrible and beautiful and with the truth about her family. Coming of age stories are at their best when the protagonists have to make hard choices and Kaylee has a few to deal with, dire consequences and all.

Plus, I really liked Nash and Kaylee. They are a good couple and they simply fit and work well together. I did think the transition from not-couple to couple was a bit abrupt though, especially taking into consideration Kaylee’s suspicions of his intentions to begin with. But by the end of the book, it was really nice and easy to see them as a girlfriend and boyfriend without any major angst.

The Bottom line is this: My Soul to Take is very, very good with a protagonist with unique powers and I am looking forward to following Kaylee in her journey of self-discovery.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: Every time that Kaylee was close to someone about to die and her Banshee powers came to the forefront. The description of the horrible feelings of grief and melancholy and then the scream she would let lose made for very powerful reading.

Additional Thoughts: make sure to pop back later when Rachel Vincent will be blogging with us about her inspiration for writing Kaylee and for a chance to win a copy of My Soul to Take!

Verdict:A sympathetic protagonist with unique powers in a genre awash with witches, werewolves and vampires and a nice romance storyline to boot.

Rating: 7 – very good

Reading Next: Rampant by Diana Peterfreund