Soul Walker

When five-year-old Anna Pierce is offered a chance to have nightmare-free nights for the small price of her voice, she jumps at it. Silence has to be better than all-consuming dreams about blood and death and fangy monsters.
The bargain she strikes comes with a secondary benefit, visions of a person’s future potential. The combination of visions and silence changes her very nature and soon she's diagnosed with autism.
Twelve years of living in her head comes to a screeching halt the moment Peter Davis pulls her out of an icy river. Her new life has her twirling, tiptoeing, and crashing through unfamiliar territory, one filled with a cranky grandma, a knocked up cousin, an unpleasant cousin, a bunch of mostly good vampires, and the boy who rescued her. To top it all off, the deal she made at five is no more.
Anna is expected to talk, to figure out her reemerging nightmares, and to control her ever-growing powers. And she'd better get it done soon because if the good vamps want a piece of a living, breathing Touched girl, the evil ones simply want. They'll take Anna for their very own.
At the beginning of the story, I found this a very interesting concept, seeing things from the perspective of an autistic girl. Seeing things from inside her head, it made me think what it must be like and how little we understand. What a creative way to see what autistic kids go through, his thoughts and characteristics and how their concept is very different from ours. We don't really know what's going on inside their minds, we just know they're not able to express themselves as easily as others.
At first I felt like her grandmother didn't understand her and it was a bit frustrating. I think most autistic kids have someone in their life that doesn't compehend what they're going through and aren't patient enough to try and learn how to approach them and respect them.
I loved seeing Anna's, the main character, thoughts and just getting to know her like others can't. I can imagine it being so frustrating; kids going through this and worse, parents that don't understand why they don't show how they really feel but they keep pressuring them.

After a couple of chapters I started seeing how the plot of the story started to unfold. It was more than an autistic kid going through life as a 17 year old with everyone else against her, since they couldn't understand her. We see the main character (the autistic girl) evolve and mature but still keep those characteristics that make her who she is. A special character, fun, that showed us a more positive way to look at life. Very different from other main teenage characters always having to grow up faster having to deal with things they shouldn't, Anna is the opposite, hasn't quite matured, overprotected in a way by her parents, she still has a lot to learn to act her age. It's an interesting evolution, we see her grow up but she still has her quirks that make her act like a child sometimes, being amused by things we, as adults, take for granted now.

I had so much fun with this book, most characters are very funny and likable, though you find annoying characters, but even they have their funny moments.
At first this book seemed very different to me, I don't know if it was because we kept seeing it through the eyes of Anna, it felt like we had few characters and somehow she didn't have the life we do, like there was something missing in her life, but as the story progresses, we see her interact more with new characters and it just takes a whole new turn. I really enjoyed knowing her and the characters, I fell in love with Peter and if he's not available, I'll be fine with Jared. There were amazing characters, we have a whole different world, with new rules but still very interesting. I'm excited to start the second book and see where Anna will take us next and see her learn more about her gift and what it means.

Favorite parts:
"Who wanted a mushy grandma when you could have a hefty old lady trying her best to fatten you up?"
"You know, I would never go against my cousin here, but if you decide to dump him-" - Jared
" 'No, go ahead. Yes, I'm writing it down.' He wasn't."