Review: My Soul to Steal by Rachel Vincent

My Soul to Steal (Soul Screamers #4) by Rachel Vincent
Released:January 2011
Publisher: Harlequin
Source: Won from Rachel at Fiktshun (thanks Rachel!!)
Rating: 3.5/5

Goodreads description:

Trying to work things out with Nash—her maybe boyfriend—is hard enough for Kaylee Cavanaugh. She can't just pretend nothing happened. But "complicated" doesn't even begin to describe their relationship when his ex-girlfriend transfers to their school, determined to take Nash back.

See, Sabine isn't just an ordinary girl. She's a mara, the living personification of a nightmare. She can read people's fears—and craft them into nightmares while her victims sleep. Feeding from human fear is how she survives.

And Sabine isn't above scaring Kaylee and the entire school to death to get whatever—and whoever—she wants

My thoughts:

I was so proud of Kaylee at the end of book 3, she made a hard, but definitely right decision, and then in this book it seems like she undid most of her good work!  She became paranoid, desperate, irrational and, I’ll be honest, a little psychotic.  She fixated on Sabine and got all jealous and insecure and I just wanted her to remember how strong she was and that she did not need a man to make her complete!

Sabine on the other hand...I knew I shouldn't like her, but I really did. She had an attitude and she wasn't scared to go after what she wanted. She didn't play fair at all, but I liked her scheming ways, because really, I could see that her and Nash worked better than Nash and Kaylee. I just needed Kaylee to see that!! I did feel bad for Kaylee, she wanted time to come to terms with what Nash had done, to figure out if she could trust him again, and Sabine took that from her, made her fight for something she wasn't even sure that she wanted in the first place, and that definitely messed her up a bit. I could totally see her issue. But I felt she went at it from totally the wrong angle.

Nash...argh don't get me started on Nash. That guy. He's so weak and a total jerk, I completely wanted to slap him for most of this book! He messed EVERYONE around and he never seemed to be sorry about any of it! Tod on the other hand. Ah, Tod. Where have you been?? Why did I not notice you before?? Seriously, Tod was amazing in this book. So supportive and helpful to Kaylee, always there for her. He was less mildly creepy and a bit stalkerish and more of a good friend....possibly more of a friend, hmmm? I thought it was pretty clear how he felt about her, but poor Kay had so much going on she didn't seem to notice.

The plot of this was really clever, I was definitely fooled by what was going on, and you can see how Kaylee's obsession with Sabine influences her judgement on certain things. But how everything worked out was really clever, as I have come to expect from any novel written by Rachel Vincent. I missed out some of the dream sequences because I found them a little boring, and felt I could see their relevance to the plot without actually having to read them and I did figure out the whole thing with Alec early, but beyond that I was completely surprised by how everything unfolded.  I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the rest of the SS series, pretty much because I was a little disappointed in Kaylee, but also a little bit because I resented the idea that Nash was 'in charge' of Sabine,  I got why Kaylee had to appeal to him about her behaviour, but didn't like the idea that he could control what she did.

On the whole though, I adore this series, and cannot wait to see what If I Die brings!