The Replacement by Brenn Yovanoff YP FIC YOVANOFF

Mackie Doyle is not Mackie Doyle. He’s a replacement. Left in exchange for the real Mackie Doyle sixteen years ago, he’s lived with humans his whole life knowing he was different, but not fully knowing why. All he knows is that the mere presence of iron makes him deathly ill and he can’t go onto consecrated ground, but no one is willing to talk about what he really is. When another child is taken and Mackie finds himself becoming friends with the child’s sister Mackie decides to go with her into an underworld known as Mayhem and face the creatures that left him in the first place and his own destiny.

This is a confidently written first novel from Yovanoff. It’s got well developed characters an unusual plot, and great descriptive language. It draws very well from the darker of Irish folk tales and keeps things gross and ghoulish like the classic Grimm fairy tales that usually ended with children dying horribly for misbehaving. If you like heroic journeys with lots of strange creatures in fantastic lands then you should really like this one. It reminded me some of Goto’s Half World (YP FIC GOTO), which I also quite enjoyed.

My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent

Fans of the Twilight series and Melissa Marr’s faerie series Wicked Lovely, Ink Exchange, and Fragile Eternity will devour Rachel Vincent’s My Soul to Take, the first book published by HarlequinTeen, a division of the legendary romance publisher. My Soul is the first of the Soul Screamers series.

High school student Kaylee Cavanagh seems to have a gift, but how special that gift is could be debated. The ability to predict things would be cool if you weren’t predicting when people were going to die. What makes this “gift” even more regrettable is the blood-curdling scream that accompanies it. Kaylee, although she doesn’t consider herself beautiful or extraordinary, just wants to try live normal life, which includes hanging out with her best friend, Emma, and finishing high school. Her young life has already faced the obstacles of her mother’s death and her father leaving her with her aunt, uncle, and snobby cousin and classmate, Sophie. Kaylee’s life veers far left of normal when she begins predicting the deaths of strangers and classmates, who just seem to drop dead for no reason.

Further complicating this issue is Nash Hudson, a gorgeous jock, who takes an interest in her on the same night as the death premonitions begin. Kaylee, a social zero at her school, wonders why Nash, one of the hottest seniors, would want to hang out with her. What could they possibly have in common? (More than you know.) And, why does he have such a calming effect on her, especially when the premonitions take place?

There are many secrets that have been kept from Kaylee, and her ability to predict death will soon force the truth to be revealed.

My Soul to Take will interest Twilight fans, but this story contains no vampires or werewolves. Instead Vincent uses legends in Irish folklore to shape her series. The book is a healthy mix of romance, paranormal, and mystery, and the author keeps the reader in engaged with plenty of twists and turns. The topic of death is in the forefront of the novel; therefore, it may not be appropriate for younger teens. The physical romance is fairly limited because of the age group for which it is intended and the heavy topic of death.