Callie Delgado is a fool. Mob leader, Ford, has her drug addict brother Josh and says he’ll send him back in pieces etc. She believes this because there were three severed fingers on his desk. They want her to steal some evidence from police records to cover his $20,000 debt. Ford tells her to go rent a soul.
***
The mob are going to send a rank amateur to do this??? She works as a kitchen hand in an old people’s home. She is not a thief; she’s not even very smart; she’s got no crime skills at all. But she’s who they ask to do it?
Why?In this world, crimes and sins attach to your soul. So you can rent a soul, do the guilt stuff, then give it back.
*frowns* so many world building issues, here.
But it is a character point that she has an agnostic belief; she doesn’t believe the hype. So it shouldn’t matter to
her. And why would having an extra soul or not, make sense for the Mob criminals either?
She asks the Mob for two weeks grace to go work for the soul Charmer so that she can borrow a soul, do the crime, steal the records and get her brother back. She can’t afford to pay cash for a soul ‘coz she has none after bailing her brother out last time.
Josh doesn’t even thank her for doing this; just bitches about how it’ll take two weeks.
So why is she bothering?The Charmer says she has to work with his enforcer, Derek, to collect souls. [Derek is constantly described as big, rough, scary and scarred.]
They fall in insta-lust.
Sighs…
I have some issues:
(view spoiler)[
Callie calls Ford on her mobile to tell him the deal is done.
Even a criminal rube like her knew talking about breaking into police records on the phone was dumb. (p. 19).
As opposed to… say… DOING the crime?
Later, Nate, Ford’s assistant parks outside her house as she stands in the street and passes her a file with all the blueprints and information about the police storage. So really, talking on the phone about crime is the least of their issues.
Overlaying a second soul onto your own muddled DNA and fingerprints—the cops knew it, but the legal system hadn’t yet caught up to making it illegal. (p. 20).
Okay… so that’s why she needs an extra soul. But… she’s still wearing her face. And she’s driving around in an unregistered car. There are probably also records of soul purchases, or visiting the premises, so there’s a definite paper trail regardless of what your DNA and fingerprints are doing. Or witnesses… you know?
And HOW does an extra soul mess up your DNA and fingerprints??? This seems like it ought to be a bigger issue. People walk around with extra souls for days or weeks. What if you get pregnant with a double soul? Does it change back after you give the soul back? If it doesn’t, that’d be a big problem. The on-flow issues are enormous.
Plus, she hasn’t even talked to her brother until AFTER she’s agreed to all this. She tells herself this must be his rock bottom, but she knows it isn’t. He’ll toss her under the bus again; like he already has. ‘I’m doing this for family’ she parrots constantly. But family is a two way street. Neither her brother nor her mother give a shit about her. They both seem to be awful people.
ALSO, this is a world with police. It doesn't really matter who’s soul she uses to commit serious crime, because SHE’S COMMITTING A CRIME. She goes to prison in this lifetime; who cares about her soul in the hereafter?
When she asks why they need to do this now, Ford tells her they are close to changing the law. Okay, but not two to six weeks close?
As Ford explained it to her, the first step toward making soul renting illegal was convincing local legislators that borrowing a soul was directly related to criminal activity. Even though it was assumed most congressmen were like everyone else, and enjoyed a little taste of sin without suffering the eternal consequences. Rented souls obscured the proof of the crime, and that made it easy to pass the buck. Once concrete evidence eventually emerged, the truth would be out, and it would be near impossible to change public opinion. The lawmakers would have to fall in line. (p. 22).
I’m not sure what this paragraph is trying to argue. Is it saying that people will be happy to have an entire criminal and police system that’s based on ‘obscured proof’? Coz I wanna say… NO.
Even if it’s arguing the opposite, the Mob are criminals. Like they give a shit about the number of laws they break. DNA and fingerprints are a tiny part of crime solving. Tiny tiny part.
In the two weeks, she’s done zero research for the crime she’s supposed to commit. She has to work a second job for weeks, she has one day to keep the soul, and the Charmer gives her magic jazz hands.
She’s made an already complex situation infinitely worse.
The soul Charmer gives her the ability to detect soul balance. But it works in a really dumb way. Her hands freeze up for a diminished soul tank and burst into flames for an overfilled one. It causes her and anyone she is touching, physical pain and it works in physical proximity. So she can’t even walk around the supermarket without her hands freaking out. She can’t function like this.
It makes no sense. The logic train has derailed, as Kid 1 says.
But my real problem is: I don’t like Callie.
She thinks carrying a flask makes her look like an alcoholic. But then drinks in every bar she goes into. The flask is to hold the souls in, anyway.
Derek asks to talk with her, she burns him off, sulks half the night about how she doesn’t know anything, and then the next day when he reiterates that they should talk she barks at him ‘it’s about time.’
Her inner voice is whiny and repetitive.
She’s been told a massage lady who does chakra balancing is actually taking souls (the evil Tess) and when she meets just such a person who wants to be let into the secure psych ward part of the old people’s home, she forgets to mention it to anyone. Even after her magic hands tell her a lot of the patients’ soul tanks are low. [ but oddly her hands didn’t react to the massage woman herself. Later they burst into flames with someone who does the same thing at a lesser scale. Later, she meets Tess again and Tess can dampen Callie’s magic, but there was no reason for Tess to do it here with a stranger.]
Callie derides other women as she imagines them drinking pink drinks with umbrellas. *grits teeth*
She has no girlfriends.
She and Derek go to a bar to meet a contact. She burns Bianca’s skin, then when she turns out to be the person Derek wanted to get info from, she reminds him (out loud) that he’s supposed to get info from her. *face palms* Stupid, girl. She then gets angry and accuses Derek of snitching. It happened in a CROWDED bar.
The author has described the mob boss Ford three times already. Stop it.
Ford says:
“ You worry about getting us the files . Your face doesn’t show on police handouts . That’s your skill here . My guys can handle the rest . ” (p. 138)
Pardon? So why use her at all? Is it magic? Is this what he literally means? Is there just a blank blob where her face should be? That’d be too easy. Cops say: hey, it’s that same girl. The one whose face looks like a blob on paper.
*whispers* I’m confused. I reckon a decent thief is worth more.
At 47% she remembers the massage lady and decides to try and track her down so that she can get a soul from her boss instead to do the job. *blinks* you’ve already made a DEAL with the soul Charmer and the Mob. What is wrong with you? This is yet another complication you don’t need to make. And the woman turns out to be Tess, the boss. Gosh if ONLY you’d mentioned this to Derek? Plus, Callie is told Tess is annoyed as she burned her friend in the bar. And Callie is surprised that Tess knows Bianca.
You and Derek wanted to talk to Bianca BECAUSE she worked for Tess. She even told you that herself, in the bar. How is this news to you?
The heat of her kiss with Derek might have been one sided for all she knew, (p. 143).
He kissed you back, got a raging hard on, protected you several times, held your hands, said you were beautiful, bought you dinner and drinks, groans when you climb behind him on his motorbike, and he takes you home, doesn’t push his luck, waits outside to make sure you’re inside safely… I don’t think there’s any confusion about what he thinks about you.
The next day, he squeezes your hand, laughs at your jokes, answers all your questions, reminds you to take a scarf as it’s cold… and you’re STILL wondering if he likes you.
Ffs girl, just ask him. Use your words.
The world building.
Gem City is obviously in the US at a close to present day. They make jokes, use memes etc from the present. So there is NO way that Gem City is the ONLY place in the US where soul renting is a thing. Or in the rest of the world. [it’s like Divergent or The Hunger Games. The world outside of this one area still exists.] The police and law makers outside of this city have their own records and their own evidence. Stealing one lot of it from Gem City won’t make a damn bit of difference.
We are told there is only soul magic, but then the Charmer does different kinds of magic as well. So that’s a flaw.
Another odd thing: people rent souls from the Charmer. He freshens and re-uses them. When Derek & Callie go to collect them, and the renter says they gave it away to someone else, that seems to be the end of it. Derek says that the next time they come in, they’ll have to pay more or wait longer. But… souls are clearly a valuable asset. They can’t make their own way back to the Charmer.
Imagine if it was a car instead. ‘Oh, I returned the Avis rentacar to Hertz.’ See?
The Charmer will run out of souls to rent out. He should be at war with the person who’s doing this. I think this should be a bigger deal.
Then we find out Tess is sucking the souls out of people’s chests without permission and without a container. She’s like a soul vampire. We are told this has consequences but aren’t shown them.
Each soul transaction takes a sliver of the resident one. What happens to the slivers of soul?
Why is Callie’s soul so pure if she’s full of guilt and shame, and doesn’t believe in God?
At 75% Callie has me screaming with frustration. She’s whining about what an awful person she is because she’s doing something for herself!? Ffs girl.
“I’m here to meet Tess.”
She dropped the pretense with a shrug. “Oh. Sure. I’ll let her know you’re here.”
Did this woman know why she was here? Had Tess told her she’d be in tonight? (p. 227).
*headdesk* NO. You just told her…this is a normal conversation when you have an appointment with someone. aaaaaagh
Tess drops her mother’s name and then a day later when her mother drops Tess’s name, Callie is surprised that they know each other.
The DNA proof is in a paper file two inches thick. *guffaws*
And the ending?
There kind of isn’t one. She does the job. No real issues. No try/fail cycle. She tried to drug Derek to keep him out of it. (So so dumb. Don’t drug your only back-up.) He’s an adult. Ask him what he wants to do.
Tess’ motivation isn’t explained. Just written off as she’s trying to purify everyone. Why? Who for? How does she make money doing this? What happened to Tess?
Ford actually comes to her apartment to get the files. The mob leader. No dead drops here. And parks his car outside with her kidnapped brother in the back seat. Talk about a physical evidence trail.
I also can’t believe that this is the end of her dealings with them. He owed twenty grand.
Callie goes to give back her jazz hands only to find that she can’t. Tess even told her this. The Charmer points out she did the crime - duh - and he blackmails her into working for him, or he’ll tell the cops. Sighs heavily… who knew that was gonna happen?
Josh and Zara (her mother) have learnt absolutely nothing. They still treat her the same way because SHE hasn’t told them not to. She’s bankrupted herself over her brother. She used to be a medical assistant and had to give it up because he kept trying to steal drugs from the hospital. She pays her mother’s bills. She buys her brother’s gifts for her mother and gets no thanks from either of them.
Not even a shred of understanding.
There’s family and there’s the line in the sand you draw and say ‘enough’. Seriously. She’s committed a crime, changed her life, sold her metaphorical soul to magic and the Charmer and her brother has to be told (by Derek) to say thank you.
When Josh hugs her, his soul deficit causes her so much physical pain she vomits her heart out. And he has to be told (again by Derek) not to touch her.
Her back story is that her mother abused her, didn’t feed her, spent their money on booze rather than on food or bills, and when Callie reported her to child services they took Callie away and appointed her elder brother as her guardian, but then he abandons her, became a drug addict, and she raised herself. Plus, Josh still relies on her to rescue him all the time.
She mentally booted herself for the thought. He [Josh] deserved her help not because he had kept her secret all these years, or because he covered for her with Zara. He was her brother. Taking care of him was what she did. (pp. 293-294).
What? She was a child and she was the victim. She owes these two alleged family members NOTHING.
It doesn’t work as a motivation that her guilt and shame about reporting her mother are driving her now. It was the RIGHT thing to do.
It makes no sense that she keeps trying to help them.
Grow a damn spine, Callie.
She treats Derek the same way. Stop making his decisions for him. She worries that he’ll hate her coz she did awful things. He’s a big scary enforcer. He knows what he’s doing.
And it makes me think less of Callie.
(hide spoiler)]It’s an interesting idea but the plot issues and the world building issues throw me out of it.
The romance is instant. I liked Derek. I didn’t like Callie.
2 stars
