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Infinite (Newsoul #3) 
by Jodi Meadows

Publication date: 28 Jan 2014 by Katherine Tegan Books

ISBN 10/13: 0062060813 | 9780062060815
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While the first book in the series, Incarnate, is catching and fresh, I felt more and more distance from the characters as the series wore on. So by the time book three, the last book, came out, I was not heavily invested in the story or the main characters. Mostly, I wanted to see how it ended.

I think there was a lot of potential in the first book. The series is easy to read. The premise is intriguing. Souls reincarnated over and over again? 5,000 years of it? Imagine the baggage! The emotional turmoil! There was so much I wanted from this series! But sadly for me, it didn’t deliver.

There’s a lot of action, but not a whole lot of descriptions. A lot of the time I felt like I was mostly reading actions and dialogue, but I didn’t have a good sense of the motivation behind each character. Nor did I feel particularly drawn to any of them. I know I’m supposed to like Ana, and her devotion to New Souls is admired, but character wise, I felt like she was hollow. I still wasn’t sold on Sam either. Even in the first book, I didn’t totally buy him as the big love interest. He is sweet and kind but totally, utterly boring. Someone told me that they sometimes find some YA books hard to read because they play into male fantasy characters for teenage girls. And for this one, I would have to agree with them.

Sam is dull. Yes, he’s a musician, he’s been alive for 5,000 years. He has a little bit of baggage, as he is eaten by a dragon like 30 times, but overall, Sam mopes about playing music and telling Ana of his undying love to her. Really, Sam? Where’s the passion, the hurt, the strength? Where’s the madness and motivation and challenge? No, Sam is more like a wet noodle from a very old bowl of soup.

The secondary characters are not solid for me either such as Stef. Stef, who is reincarnated over and over again as Sam’s best friend and sometimes love interest, fades into the background by book three and nothing is really resolved. Even the big bad guy, the big evil, the man with the plan who wants to enslave everyone, is an annoying gnat you want to swat away. He's not the immediate danger, no matter how far into the series I got. I was more concerned with the townspeople wanting to kill Ana and her friends and the pregnant mothers who may have No Soul babies.

Imagine you have a town of people who have lived and loved over and over again for 5,000 years. It’s like an never-ending high school filled with love, hope, emotional angst and incestuous relationships. (I mean that as in my boyfriend is now your boyfriend, and now he’s my boyfriend again, etc.) But instead, we barely brush the surface of the last 5,000 years and what this means to each of the characters.

I’m sorry I didn’t enjoy Infinite. While I love the idea of the story and the possibilities of what it could have brought, I was left disappointed in the series and ending.