Gina's Reviews > Borrowed Souls

Callie is an enabler who is about to do something dangerous and illegal in order to rescue her brother from the bad guys over a drug debt. She also has an enabling and toxic relationship with her mother than plays into the story. It involves going to the Soul Charmer to borrow a soul - letting another soul enter your body which helps confuse cameras, DNA, and fingerprints (making soul borrowing a favorite of criminals) and also lets the sin of the act fall on the borrowed soul instead of your own (begrudgingly approved by the Catholic Church). She has to work for the Soul Charmer for 2 weeks to afford the borrowed soul, putting her in league with the Charmer's repo man who also becomes a love interest.
If the author had given me a typed copy of this book as her first draft for me to be an early reader, I would have honestly said it is amazing. Solid first draft with intriguing if something unlikable characters, interesting world, good pacing and ending. Then, I would have written up a significant number of questions for editing that truly needed to be answered for the world to make sense. What happens if you die with 2 souls? If your own soul stays in your body at the same time as the borrowed one, how does the sin know to attach to the borrowed one or it mess with fingerprints and DNA? The laws, policing, and criminal side of this isn't clear - explain? Doesn't the church give absolution with confession so what point is borrowing another soul? Do the people who sell their souls die? Fade away? Going on living as usual? This one thing is what Callie's brother is holding over her head after all this time? Seriously? To her credit, Mueller does touch on a few of these but not enough to make the points work in a believable way. These are just a few of the many, many parts of the book that just didn't make enough sense to make for a complete or compelling story. Add in some lack of character development and a few TSTL moments, and this makes a fabulous first draft that some excellent editing, about 50 more pages, and maybe 1 good re-write would have made a 5 star book. I don't think I'll read book 2.