THE COLLECTOR by Victoria Scott

The Collector
Victoria Scott

Rating: C-
Synopsis:
He makes good girls...bad. 

Dante Walker is flippin’ awesome, and he knows it. His good looks, killer charm, and stellar confidence have made him one of hell’s best—a soul collector. His job is simple: weed through humanity and label those round rears with a big red good or bad stamp. Old Saint Nick gets the good guys, and he gets the fun ones. Bag-and-tag.

Sealing souls is nothing personal. Dante’s an equal-opportunity collector and doesn't want it any other way. But he’ll have to adjust, because Boss Man has given him a new assignment:

Collect Charlie Cooper’s soul within ten days.

Dante doesn't know why Boss Man wants Charlie, nor does he care. This assignment means only one thing to him, and that’s a permanent ticket out of hell. But after Dante meets the quirky Nerd Alert chick he’s come to collect, he realizes this assignment will test his abilities as a collector…and uncover emotions deeply buried.

My thoughts on the book:
After reading others' reviews, I had really high hopes for The Collector. You'd think I'd learn that usually when I have high expectations for a book, they aren't met, so I should just stop doing that, but nonetheless, I still was hopeful that The Collector would be a fantastic book. I was let down, of course. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate the novel or anything like that, but certain things bothered me. The writing was okay, but nothing amazing. The plot was fairly predictable, the world-building was a bit lacking, and the characters were a bit flat. 

Dante was the only character who really had a personality. The rest of the characters, even Charlie, were cookie-cutter people. I mean yea, Charlie was apparently heinously ugly, but other than that, she's the typical boring good girl who's starved for male attention. Also, she was so gullible that it wasn't even believable. There's one lie he tells her that she just buys into without question. It was so unbelievable that it kept me from enjoying the rest of the story. I hate when authors control their characters like that and make them conveniently stupid instead of actually addressing a problem and working around it. That made me lose a lot of respect for Scott. Also, Dante turned me off pretty early on because he hated cats, and as a cat lover, I just don't trust anyone who doesn't like cats, haha. Also, he talked like some wanna-be 1920's gangster or something. No one says "Boss Man" and "Big Guy" anymore. Seriously, it was ridiculous. He was only suppose to have died two years ago. As far as I know, two years ago was 2011, not 1911. Just saying. 

The plot was super predictable. Nothing took me by surprise, and I knew the ending would be all conveniently tied up in a neat little box. There's of course a problem that will have to be solved in a sequel, but I'm pretty sure I already know what will happen with that, whether or not the story has already been written. This author loves convenience, and if she can't manipulate situations and characters into fitting neatly into the little boxes she creates, then it won't be used. 

The pacing was pretty spot-on, and I wasn't bored at all. There's not much action, but I did enjoy how Dante evolved (though, as far as I know, he never decided to love cats). I just wish there'd been more depth to the characters and situations. This book held my interest, but only because I was hoping that I was wrong about the predictability of it all. I really wanted the author not to take the easy way out with at least one thing, but that didn't happen. 

Overall, I'd say check this book out from the library. A lot of people have loved this book, but it wasn't for me. It's not the worst thing I've ever read, but the plot and characters were all a bit too shallow for my personal enjoyment. I'll probably pick up the sequel from the library just to see if things improve, but I'm not counting the days until its released. 

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