The Stars Never Rise by Rachel Vincent

Sixteen-year-old Nina Kane should be worrying about her immortal soul, but she's too busy trying to actually survive. Her town's population has been decimated by soul-consuming demons, and souls are in short supply. Watching over her younger sister, Mellie, and scraping together food and money are all that matters. The two of them are a family. They gave up on their deadbeat mom a long time ago.

When Nina discovers that Mellie is keeping a secret that threatens their very existence, she'll do anything to protect her. Because in New Temperance, sins are prosecuted as crimes by the brutal Church and its army of black-robed exorcists. And Mellie's sin has put her in serious trouble.

To keep them both alive, Nina will need to trust Finn, a fugitive with deep green eyes who has already saved her life once and who might just be an exorcist. But what kind of exorcist wears a hoodie?

Wanted by the Church and hunted by dark forces, Nina knows she can't survive on her own. She needs Finn and his group of rogue friends just as much as they need her.

Loved, loved, LOVED this book. Great start to a (hopefully) new and long series from Rachel Vincent. Vincent created a .... I don't know if it falls under post apocalyptic or dystopian, I'm not good at differentiating between the two although I'm leaning more to post-apocalyptic for this one.

This world, to me, is scary ass because it's run purely by religion and it seems like everything is a sin and the punishments aren't small or insignificant. I mean, these church types burn people on TV for small misdeeds.

This is a world where demons consumed too many souls and now if you want to have a baby, there has to be a soul for it which means either a family member had to be willing to die for the baby or the baby dies. There's a list but I'm unclear about this list at this stage, you have to be lucky enough for a soul to be on the list when the baby is born or the baby dies. Basically, there are no free souls for people because of the demons, they possess people and they consume them slowly until they look like the demon they are inside. The church has exorcists to deal with them but then Nina meets a guy that says he's an exorcist but he certainly doesn't deal with demons the same way the church exorcists do. Nina starts to question everything and therefore must escape the town.

I really can't express my love for this book properly. I'm a huge fan of Rachel Vincent's writings and this new book is no different, I can't wait to read more from this world.


The Book Depository: The Stars Never Rise
Amazon UK: The Stars Never Rise