The Collector by Victoria Scott

Dante Walker #1

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.

So, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect going into this book. From the snippet, I was expecting a much more, I guess sexually confident guy. (Kind of like Kaidan Rowe from the Sweet Evil trilogy, but cockier). But he was just mostly a jerk at the start. Quick to judge people but not as "dirty" as I expected. He was still a cocky little shit. But he made me laugh a couple times, and he wasn't without character development. Dante was one of the best parts of the book.

Charlie Cooper is another story. And I really don't care for how the book portrayed her. She was a 17-year-old girl that had skin, hair, and dental issues. She walks with a limp because of a fire she was in when she was young. Yes, they made her a happy person with two great friends, but her character development was virtually non-existent. The only changes she went through were physical, she didn't really gain any new personal confidence, it was all biased on her physical appearance changing, which when/if that went away she'd go back to being the same person. Which is neither good nor bad, it's just stagnant. That's the way it felt to me anyways.

The rest of the story wasn't too bad, Dante is again the best part of the book. Him and his growth. How he goes from being so sure about himself and his role in his afterlife, to questioning everything about his job. But I kind of felt the way he went about "corrupting" Charlie, was weird. He corrupted her by being really nice to her and protected her from bullies. The only mild corruption he did to her was talking her into skipping school and going to a couple parties.

This was a fun read, there were some surprises. I enjoyed it, and the concept of the book was interesting enough that I'll probably read the other books in this trilogy.