Incarnate by Jodi Meadows Book Review

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

US Release Date: January 31st 2012

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Author Info: Jodi Meadows' website

Source: Amazon

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Series: #1 of Newsoul

Rating: 4 out of 5

Buy It: Amazon / Barnes and Noble

Challenge: 2012 Debut Author Challenge

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New soul

Ana is new. For thousands of years in Range, a million souls have been reincarnated over and over, keeping their memories and experiences from previous lifetimes. When Ana was born, another soul vanished, and no one knows why.

No soul

Even Ana's own mother thinks she's a nosoul, an omen of worse things to come, and has kept her away from society. To escape her seclusion and learn whether she'll be reincarnated, Ana travels to the city of Heart, but its citizens are afraid of what her presence means. When dragons and sylph attack the city, is Ana to blame?

Heart

Sam believes Ana's new soul is good and worthwhile. When he stands up for her, their relationship blooms. But can he love someone who may live only once, and will Ana's enemies--human and creature alike--let them be together? Ana needs to uncover the mistake that gave her someone else's life, but will her quest threaten the peace of Heart and destroy the promise of reincarnation for all?

Jodi Meadows expertly weaves soul-deep romance, fantasy, and danger into an extraordinary tale of new life

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Onto the review!
(If you're too lazy to read my review you can just check out my video at CookieReadingCorner on youtube.)

Plot: The whole premise of reincarnation I personally think is very creative. I've never read anything involving it quiet like Jodi Meadows does it. That being said I went into this book with high expectations for the plot and I didn't get exactly what I wanted. The set up in the beginning is great. The way Meadows introduces Ana and how she meets Sam is fantastic. However, once we finally get to Heart the plot kind of falls apart. It's very disjointed and didn't connect well to what Ana was originally supposed to be doing. But in the end it finally comes together with some great plot development and a lot of surprises.

Pacing: Part way through the book the pacing kind of lagged a bit. It's in that middle section where Ana isn't doing very much. However once you get closer to the end the pacing picks up a lot and the action gets really involved.

Characters: The two main characters, Sam and Ana, and their relationship is really one of the best parts about this book. I really admire how Jodi Meadows wrote Ana because she is very realistic. Ana is coming from an abusive home and you can really see that in the way she thinks and acts. But, as she spends more time away from that abusive situation you get to see her grow in confidence. Sam, I loved because he seemed absolutely genuine towards Ana and he had a couple flaws of his own. So he wasn't this perfect being showing Ana everything he knew about the world. Instead, he was very human in his actions and mistakes and flaws. So they were both equal in the relationship. There were times when Sam had to save Ana but also when Ana had to save Sam. 

Writing: Jodi Meadows' writing is good. It makes the world easy to visualize and understand through Ana's eyes and uses interesting descriptive tools to pinpoint what exactly Ana is looking at and feeling.

Overall: To be honest, while I was reading this book I thought I was only going to give it a 3 out of 5 stars. However, the "big finish" really redeemed the book for me and made me see Jodi Meadows' brilliance. Jodi Meadows shows her amazing potential in this novel of mystery and self-discovery. Although she may have some things she needs to develop a little more thoroughly I can't wait for the next book in this stunning series to see how everything plays out.

4 out of 5 stars

Should you read it?

yes

Should you buy it?

Sure, but it's not a must buy