✍ Scribed by Barnabas Miller; Jordan Orlando
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Mary expected her seventeenth birthday to be a blowout to remember, courtesy of her best friends, fellow New York City prepsters Amy and Joon, and her doting boyfriend, Trick.
Instead, the day starts badly and gets worse. After waking up in a mortifying place with a massive, unexplainable hangover, Mary soon discovers that nobody at school is even aware that it's her birthday. As evening approaches, paranoia sets in. Mary just can't shake the feeling that someone is out to get her—and, as it turns out, she's right. Before the night is over, she's been killed in cold blood.
But murder is just the beginning of Mary's ordeal. Her soul gets trapped in a strange limbo, and she must relive the day of her death through the eyes of seven people—each of whom, she finds, had plenty of reasons to hate her. As Mary explores the mysteries of her world, discovering secrets that were hidden in plain sight while she was alive, she clings desperately to the hope that she can solve her own murder, change the past, and—just maybe—save her own life.
With its blend of suspense, horror, fantasy, and realism, 7 Souls is an adrenaline rush of a thriller.
From the Hardcover edition.
Gr 9 Up–Mary wakes on her 17th birthday naked, in a display window of Crate & Barrel, on view to the commuters in New York City. She has mysterious scratches on her back and a hangover. She arrives at school to find that no one even remembers that it is her birthday. The day gets continually worse, until she finds herself at a surprise birthday party. Her happiness is short lived, as the night ends with her murder. She then must relive the day through the eyes of seven of her friends and begins to understand what was really going on the day she died and tries to save herself. While the premise sounds similar to Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall (HarperCollins, 2010), the two books are not read-alikes. This one is a plot-driven, “Gossip Girl”-type book (Little, Brown) with a supernatural twist. The incessant name-dropping is distracting, with everything from paint (Krylon) to Scotch (Dewar's, oddly for a book with so many posh references) to cigarettes (Dunhill). The transition from Mary's point of view, mostly lacking in supernatural elements, to her after-death experiences is awkward. Even as she sees what was really going on, character motivations are often unclear. Despite its flaws, this is a book that will be read and enjoyed by fans of Melissa de la Cruz's “Blue Bloods” (Hyperion) and its ilk. –Kristin Anderson, Columbus Metropolitan Library System, OHα(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
This clever, albeit overplotted, page-turner combines murder, revenge, and an ancient Egyptian curse. Mary is popular, beautiful, and envied, but on her seventeenth birthday, she inexplicably wakes up naked and hungover in a display bed in a New York City Crate and Barrel. This strange event sets the tone for the rest of her day, and that night a cruel prank escalates into her murder. It turns out that Mary’s closest friends truly despise her,and although Mary is certainly flawed, she doesn’t appear nasty enough to warrant such an extreme tactic. The suspense intensifies when Mary’s cursed soul inhabits the bodies of the seven people responsible for her death. As she relives the night in their bodies, she must solve the circumstances of her murder before someone else dies. A subplot involving Mary’s deceased father and an unnecessary final chapter crowd the intricately woven mystery. Readers will quickly polish off this hard-to-put-down thriller. Grades 8-11. --Kimberly Garnick
Library : General
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780385736732
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