Soul Taken by Katlyn Duncan

After-life just got a lot more complicated.

Maggie is a Soul Collector. It’s her job to transport souls from the Living Realm to the After – but during a mission to find a stolen soul, she ends up stuck in a teen mean girl’s body. Trapped, Maggie’s soul is catapulted into Ally’s life – and the human world she hasn’t experienced for one hundred years. But, as a descendant of the most powerful beings in the After, Maggie must rescue Ally before the girl’s soul dies…

To survive, Maggie must uncover devastating secrets – because with one soul taken by a terrifying enemy, Maggie’s could be next!

The cover of this book really caught my eye when I was browsing on Netgalley. I think Carina UK have fabulous covers!

This was a completely new and unique story for me. I have not read many afterlife stories before, but this one has peaked my interest again. This story had my attention the whole way through. The writing style was nice and easy to follow and it was particularly nice to read after reading some quite heavy novels recently.

Maggie is a soul collector. When a person is about to pass away, she matches them with their True Soul so that she will be able to take them to Gate 7. Here they either become a Soul Collector like Maggie or they opt to be recycled- start a new life as someone else. As an expert soul collector, Maggie is regularly put in charge of training inexperienced soul collectors. She is hoping to be promoted to The Guard; those that can cross over into different realms and guide humans. But Maggie is horrified to discover that the position is given to Aaron despite him never matching a person with their true soul and one nearly disastrous moment when the True Soul is nearly not matched. 

On one of Maggie's days off, she sees at dark figure at the cemetery she is at before Cooper, one of The Guard comes rushing to find her. She is then put on an extremely important Soul Collecting mission, one that could have serious implications if the True Soul is not found. This where she meets Ally. Ally is a prognatum soul; she is descended from the Caeleste, who mated with humans centuries ago and are the originals of the after life. At 18 Ally will transform into Caeleste and join The Guard. But Ally's True Soul has been taken and if it gets into the hands of The Shadowed, Ally will be strongly influenced by them and will be one of them with catastrophic consequences. 

It is whilst at Ally's school that Maggie comes across the mysterious man that she saw at the cemetery. Maggie feels like she recognises him and he confuses her by saying "They lied to us Maggie". This really peaked my interest. Who was this mysterious man and how did he know Maggie?

I really liked Maggie as a main character, Maggie has been a soul collector for 100 years and has no memory of her previous life. She was extremely likeable despite seeming to keep to herself. I warmed to her because she was independent and got the job done. Despite keeping to herself, she was a very caring person and wanted to help others out as best as she could. Thinking about it I liked all of the characters, apart from maybe Ally at the beginning as she was mean to her classmates and the people that worked in her house for her and her Dad. 

I really think my love for paranormal stories has grown, particularly after reading this. It was a whole new concept, but not at all confusing. There was so much action in this story which was brilliant. It propels the story on and you just want to read more and more to see where the novel will take you next.

This was a fantastic debut novel by Katlyn and I am so thrilled that there are two more books coming!! I am now eagerly awaiting the second in The Life After trilogy as although there is not cliffhanger at the end, the ending is left slightly open by the author, so we know there is more to come.

9/10