review: 7 Souls by Barnabas Miller and Jordan Orlando

pub date: July 13, 2010
publisher: Delacorte
pgs: 371
content: swearing (including a number of f-bombs), underage drinking, violence, drugs
goodreads

Blurb:
Inexplicable things have been happening to Manhattan socialite Mary since she awoke on her seventeenth birthday, and by the end of the day she has been killed, inhabited the bodies of seven people close to her, and faced some ugly truths about herself.
 
me:
First off, the cover is UGLY. I judge books by their covers all of the time. If I hadn't gone the extra mile to read the blurb, I would never have picked this book up. I'm also not a fan of the title. It's boring. It doesn't even make sense until the last fourth of the book.  This is a contemporary supernatural teen, and it does not look like that from the cover. Which is sad since I liked the book.
 
I expected Mary to die pretty close to the beginning. She's going to be inhabiting 7 souls and I assumed she would relive the whole day through different people, like Before I Fall, sorta. But the whole first half is Mary living her day, she doesn't die until pg 179. And then she only sees snippets of the day through her seven visits to other bodies. So I got a little impatient for her to die since I expected it to happen so much sooner.

Also, I'm totally into plot, just set up the basic scene and I'm good. There was a lot of description of places and people that I just didn't care about, so I thought it lagged a little. More impatience.

Mary isn't a very sympathetic character. She's a selfish jerk. Which is the point of the plot. And even though she isn't a great person, I still felt rather badly for her. Especially when she ends up dead at the end of her birthday.   

But, the overall plot is awesome. I really liked the twists and turns. Reading through the day through Mary's eyes the first time I had assumptions and ideas of what was going on, and sometimes I was right and other times I was completely off base. I liked seeing the day through her friend's eyes and the memories that came a long with the habitation. It was a ride. It was a fun ride that I enjoyed a lot.

The ending confused me, but not in a way that distracted from my liking. I actually liked it better than Before I Fall, though this is a great read alike for Before I Fall, too. Same concept, different execution. (haha, get it?)