Review: Tortured Souls by Kimber Leigh Weathon

Tortured Souls (Orion Circle, #1) by Kimber Leigh Weathon
Published: June 29th 2014 by Sea Dragon Press
Pages: 227

Sometimes Rest in Peace isn't an option.

Kacie Ramsey sees ghosts—and it's ruining her life. Her mother left, her father blames her, and no matter how hard she tries, she can't keep the ghosts away. Now a new power has emerged. Nightly visions of grisly murders and a relentless predator draw her to the brink of insanity.

When the phantom appears at a party, Kacie's longtime crush, Logan, saves her. He invites her to join the Orion Circle, a group of supernatural hunters with chapters in schools all over the country. Through the Circle, Kacie learns to embrace her spiritual powers, and for the first time in her life she feels in control rather than a victim.

But the Foxblood Demon will not give up so easily. A demented serial killer in life who trapped the souls of the thirteen children he murdered, imprisoning them within the walls of his mansion. Now in death, he plots his return while drawing power from the pure souls of the children. He recognizes something in Kacie he's never seen before—a medium powerful enough to provide a vessel for his tainted soul.

Kacie can't ignore the tortured souls of the children crying out to her every night. With Logan at her side, she will fight the Foxblood Demon. But can they banish this powerful phantom, or will Kacie lose not only her body, but her eternal soul to the monster.

"Somehow I resist the urge to squeal. He texted a heart symbol!"

Thank you Sea Dragon Press for providing me with a copy of this book!

I am seriously disappointed. I thought I was going to love Tortured Souls. The premise of a younger version of Ghost Busters combined with exorcism seemed intriguing enough for me to request a copy. However, after reading I feel like I can suit this book into a specific category of mine and probably many others: books with a great premise, but poor in execution. It lacks on so many levels it's hardly describable. I'm going to do my very best and give it a shot anyway.

The romance is the biggest let-down of the entire book. If Logan and Kacie didn't knew each other before the book opened up, you could say it was an obvious case of insta-love. So when it actually wasn't, it certainly came across as it. Besides the insta-love, the dialogues and actions between the two lovers were far from realistic. It seemed like the author tried too hard to make the romance bittersweet and to swoon for. Comparing Logan to other fifteen-year-old boys, there are a few to none who are as romantic as he is. The biggest example is constantly showering Kacie with the most romantic compliments:

"I must look awful," I say when he takes another tissue and carefully wipes around my eyes.
"No, you don't" he murmurs, his lips curled into a tiny smile. "You're beautiful. A few tears won't change that."

My eyes were already rolling. I quickly came to the conclusion that I'm not a big fan of this eternal romance between two fifteen-year-olds. In my opinion, it looked too much like a typical Disney Channel relationship. The one that develops way too quickly so instead of patiently building it up, it escalates and fills the entire film, or in this case book, with it. In the end, the lovers didn't seem to be two individuals any more, but one piece. Words like independence and self-sufficient definitely do not belong in their vocabulary. They were always reliant on each other and can't seem to do anything alone. The special bond they suddenly have jumped out of nowhere, and I'm quite sure being possessed by an evil spirit isn't prevented by kissing someone. So surprising or not, I will not be picking up future sequels just because of the ridiculous romance.

I did not like Kacie as a protagonist. Even without the laughable romance, she still managed to annoy me with the most simple things. Being naive as hell is without doubt one of them. Another reason had to be the ugly crying. This girl cried more than I can count on my fingers. You would expect her to be a little more though after everything she went through, or at least to be able to stand up for herself. Sadly, that's not the case. With everything happening around her, the only thing she seems to be capable of is faint or curling up into a ball and cry or, expecting her boyfriend to comfort her at all times. If you're looking for a female heroine with a little more courage than that, there are some minor characters in this book that do fulfill those expectations. You can guess that I'm therefore kind of sad that I didn't get to read this book from Rebecca's or Raven's point of view.

By this point of my review, I'm one hundred percent sure that you have read the synopsis. If you have, feel free to skip the first half of the book. I have no idea why someone would sum up the first half of their book and create a synopsis out of it. Because of this, I had almost no intention to continue reading in the beginning. Fortunately a few action scenes started popping up halfway through and that the ending sort of brought a feeling of suspense. I just can't shake off the feeling that I read way more than two hundred pages, but that's maybe because the dragging page did nothing good to it.

To sum it all up, the romance is close to insta-love and hardly believable. The protagonist cried more in this book than I rolled my eyes, and the pace resembles to a snail near death. If it weren't for the few good characters, I wouldn't have bothered to give it a star more.