(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

It starts in prehistory.  A young man and a young woman fight over a precious jewel.  Their time together is short, but the reverberations are lasting.

Years pass.  Generations pass.  Centuries pass.  But fate keeps drawing them together.  Whenever their paths cross, there is that strong attraction.  That unexplainable affinity.  That feeling that they’ve been together before.

Theirs is a love haunted by history.  From Egyptian slavery to Greek society.  From Massachusetts witch trials to Civil War battlefields.  From Paris in the 1930s to the present day.  Circumstances will fight them…but a greater force will reunite them.  Because some people are meant for each other—no matter how long it takes.

This is not a book you read for historical accuracy, fast pacing or an unpredictable plot.  This is a book you read for guilty pleasure.  And as long as you keep that in mind, you’ll enjoy Reincarnation.

Suzanne Weyn’s novel is by no means historically accurate.  For example, when they are in ancient Egypt—she a singer named Tetisherti and he a Nubian slave called Taharaq—it made me snort aloud when he called Thebes ‘Luxor’, claiming that was its ancient Egyptian name.  Bull crap.  Thebes was called Weset.  And the idea that Taharaq saw the pyramids when he was coming up from Nubia to Weset is enough to make an Egyptologist cry.  And for reasons unknown, Suzanne Weyn calls Abu Simbel ‘Abu Simpel’ and Sekhmet ‘Sempkhet’.  I have never, ever seen those names translated in such a way (even in the Wikipedia articles I’ve linked to).  Utter nonsense.  But again, this is not meant to be historically accurate.

One thing that actually made me enjoy Reincarnation was the characterization.  All of the different reincarnations are three dimensional and sympathetic.  The attraction between them was very real and the romance actually didn’t feel forced.  There were certain traits that stayed with the characters in all of their lifetimes, but their circumstances in those different lifetimes were very different.

The plot is predictable, no doubt.  Come on, you know how stories like this are going to end.  However, because of the nice writing style and interesting characters, I actually enjoyed Reincarnation as a sort of guilty pleasure.  It’s never going to win any literary awards (nor should it) but as long as you take it as what it is—light reading—you’ll enjoy it.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble