Katie King
Written on Feb 17, 2015
**3.5 Stars**
Soulprint has a very interesting concept behind it: what if our souls were re-used when we died, and all our experiences influenced the next bearer of our soul? This is a reality for Alina, bearer of the soul of a murderous terrorist, June. Some never want to know their "soul lineage" but Alina has known since birth. Her soul was put on a watchlist, and Alina kept locked up "for her own safety". The book presents many questions: Is Alina a danger to the world too? How much influence does June's soul have on Alina? Can Alina be held responsible for June's crimes?
This was very cool to read about and explore. The idea that we have soulprints much like we have fingerprints is actually very intriguing. It reminds me a lot of Jodi Meadows' Incarnate series. The scifi aspect was integrated very seamlessly into the story as well. It felt very natural to Alina's world.
As far as Alina goes, I really felt bad for her. Born with the shadow of someone else's legacy over her head, cut off from society for life, almost murdered by her father, and abandoned by her mother. All she wants to do is be free, from the island and from the ghost of June. Nobody is willing to grant her that because of a study conducted many years ago, predicting violence within souls over lifetimes having a correlation of .80. That's pretty damning as far as research goes. So naturally, Alina seeks an escape in both regards. The island escape was pretty simple. June, not so much.
However one must question why everyone accepted this study so readily. One of the golden rules as far as research goes is that correlation does not mean causation. Just because sales of ice cream and deaths by drowning are highly correlated, does not mean large amounts of ice cream will cause you to drown - there is a third variable. Namely, during summer there are both high ice cream sales and also high volumes of people near large bodies of water (some of which will drown). This is the main problem I had with the research study. And without it, there's really no reason to keep Alina locked up. Without it, this whole plot can't be justified.
So I didn't exactly know what to think about Soulprint. I liked the idea a lot. I thought it fit very well into the story. But I wasn't exactly impressed with how it was executed as a plot device. The research study has a huge flaw in it - regardless of whether someone fudged the details. Speaking of, don't they have an IRB? But anyways, without the study, nobody would've locked Alina up. She would've just grown up knowing she had a murderer's soul - surely attached with some stigma, but she wouldn't be as ostracized so severely. Actually, if she never volunteered to know whose soul she had, nobody might have EVER known and she could've been a normal girl. That doesn't sell books, though.
And then there's the romance. I guess it seemed sort of natural that Alina should fall in love with Cameron since the only other people were a creep and a the love interest's sister. I guess she didn't have to fall in love with anyone, but whatever. It's just hard for me to accept that everything happened in like the span of a week. Was it week? Was it less? Was it a month? I can't even say exactly because there might've been spots where we skipped a lot of time - I didn't understand it. Alina's interactions with Cameron were also pretty boring to me. Because they were based on exactly nothing, it just felt like going through the motions to me. Oh look we're staring at each other. I guess we should break the touch barrier. I guess we should kiss. I guess we love each other. Okay...
One part that I felt dragged on incessantly was after she got off the island. They just spent a huge amount of time on the run, but not actually trying to get anywhere. By the time they realized that they should be finding Ivory Street, we had spent an ENORMOUS chunk of the book just running from one hiding spot to another. And there's no way they knew where they had to be going, so it was just aimless. I kept wondering when we would get to any action. Whether we would get back to figuring out June. Whether this would get interesting again.
This is pretty negative so I'll add some points about why I gave this 3.5 stars. Like I said, I loved the idea. It's honestly great and just original enough to surprise me. I liked Alina's time on the island. I liked the conflict between everyone and Dominic. I liked the mystery of June and her notes. I liked uncovering the secret. I liked the characters well enough. I even liked the ending, although it felt pretty convenient that everyone just accepted the study was wrong after believing it for like 18 years.
This wasn't a bad book. This was actually pretty good. But the huge chunk in the middle really turned me off for a while. It really made me not want to pick it back up. But in the end, I'm glad I did.
