Kate Harrison
July 10th 2012
Indigo
Welcome to Soul Beach.
People are dying to get here . . .
www.soulbeach.org
Alice Forster talks to her dead sister, Meggie, in the virtual world of Soul Beach – an online paradise for the young, the beautiful and the dead – but paradise can be stifling and the Beach’s guests want to move on.
If Alice can solve the mystery of her sister’s murder then Meggie will be free.
But passions are running high, the temperature’s rising and as Alice gets closer to finding the killer, the killer is getting closer to Alice . . .
I really enjoyed the first book of this series, Soul Beach, so I was looking forward to finally getting to read Soul Fire, and I was not disappointed. Soul Fire really ratcheted up the tension from the last book, as well as putting my least favourite aspect of Soul Beach (the romance) on the back burner to let Meggie's mystery take up most of Alice's energy.
One of my favourite aspects of the first book was just the concept of Soul Beach. We so often see people who can communicate with the dead or who have seen ghosts, but a social networking site? That's pretty original. What's also really great about it is that we're never really sure if it's real or how it works, and I hope we'll get a bit more enlightenment on that in the next book, but for now I'm happy with the intrigue.
I also really like what the events of the last book led up to in this book with how the people on the beach view Alice, and the new aspect of the story where as well as helping Meggie and trying to find out who killed her, she also helps find out what happened to the other kids on the beach. I like having these other mysteries intertwined with the main plot, and seeing how Meggie's murder links in with everything else. I'm just a teensy bit frustrated that we haven't really got any closer to finding out who Meggie's killer was, and I do have my suspicions, but I'm still not sure. I've narrowed it down to either Lewis or Sahara (because after this book it pretty much narrows the choices down for you), because I think for it to have been Ade or somebody then it'd just be a bit anticlimatic. Of course, I'd still be a bit annoyed if it was Sahara because it just seems to obvious. She just comes across as being too unstable, though I'm still not sure of she could've pulled it off. And I went into this book loving Lewis like I did before, and for the first half of the book he was lovely, but after a bit something just started to seem off about him. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can't decide if he's as trustworthy as Alice thinks he is. Though I can't think of a reason for him wanting to kill Meggie. It has to be someone Alice knows, though, otherwise there'll be no shock! God, I just love mysteries.
Danny just annoyed me, as per usual. Ok, maybe I'm being a bit unfair on him, especially seeing as I laid into Nash so much last week as well, but he's just so BORING. All he does is lounge around on the beach kissing Alice and looking sad when she's not around. He's not a bad guy at all, I just cannot think of anything that I like or find remotely interesting about him. Which sounds a little harsh when I say it out loud, but hey. It's my blog and it's my opinion, you don't have to agree with me. I was kind of sad about not getting to see as much between Meggie and Alice in this book, too. Because of a new arrival on the beach, Meggie is pretty occupied for a lot of it, so most of the time when Alice was on the beach was either kissing with Danny (*Yawn*) or talking to Javier, and I hope in the last book we'll get to see more of Meggie and Alice together, because their relationship was one of my favourite parts of the first book.
I did really like the Spanish setting of this book, though. I thought that it really added a lot, particularly with all the tension about who in the group could've killed Meggie. The whole time that Alice is there, she knows that she's not 100% safe and that just added a great dynamic. I really, really cannot wait for the next book because I am desperate to see how this series is going to end. Hopefully shockingly.
Soul Fire is a great installment in a brilliant series that I highly recommend if you're looking for something tense, fast-paced, exciting and new to read over Christmas.
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