Tagged: reincarnation
The Collector of Dying Breaths by M. J. Rose
(Cover picture courtesy of BandelierGirlReadsEverything.)
In 1533, an Italian orphan with an uncanny knack for creating fragrance is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. To repay his debt, over the years René le Florentine is occasionally called upon to put his vast knowledge to a darker purpose: the creation of deadly poisons used to dispatch the Queen’s rivals.
But it’s René other passion—a desire to reanimate a human breath, to bring back the lives of the two people whose deaths have devastated him—that incites a dangerous treasure hunt five centuries later. That’s when Jac L’Etoile—suffering from a heartache of her own—becomes obsessed with the possibility of unlocking Rene’s secret to immortality.
Soon Jac’s search reconnects her with Griffin North, a man she’s loved her entire life. Together they confront an eccentric heiress whose art collection rivals many museums and who is determined to keep her treasures close at hand, not just in this life but in her next.
Set in the forest of Fontainebleau, crisscrossing the lines between the past and the present, M.J. Rose has written a mesmerizing tale of passion and obsession. This is a gothic tale perfect for fans of Anne Rice, Deborah Harkness, and Diana Galbadon.
[Full disclosure: I was provided a free ebook through NetGalley for the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]
If I had to describe The Collector of Dying Breaths in just one word it would have to be ‘beautiful.’ Yes, beautiful.
Beautiful is the word that comes to mind simply because M. J. Rose’s writing style is just that. It’s descriptive, but not overly so. It’s very heavily focused on appealing to the reader’s five senses. Since this is a novel heavily centred around perfume of course she describes the scents in pretty much every scene, but she also doesn’t neglect the reader’s ears or sense of touch. Very few writers can appeal to all five of the senses in a natural way but M. J. Rose stands out in this respect.
As with most books, the one element I liked most was the characters. René le Florentine really spoke to me as a character and through the flashbacks I felt his triumphs and his greatest sorrows. He really is a tragic character and although he tries to do the right thing, it seems like it always turns out badly for him. I can’t tell you much more about poor René without having too many spoilers but I can tell you that by the end of the novel your heart will ache for him.
Jac is an interesting character as well. Having lost her beloved brother and seeing an opportunity to complete his life’s work, she’s in a state of emotional confusion. Added to that are her constant past life memories that are triggered by being around objects and locations with so much history. I liked slowly learning her back-story and seeing how she coped with both her brother’s death and the return of her former lover. She changes throughout the course of the novel and I was very happy with her decision in the end.
The plot is not fast-paced by most people’s standards but The Collector of Dying Breaths is interesting enough to keep you reading into the early morning hours. The plot twists and turns as you try to learn what happened to the unfortunate René and whether Jac could complete her brother’s work or not. These point of view shifts never really slow down the action in the story, though. Instead, they add more tension as the past and present collide, culminating in a heart-pounding climax.
If you like history, romance or just books with well fleshed-out characters, you’re going to love The Collector of Dying Breaths. I can’t speak to its historical accuracy as I know very little about the period, but I guarantee that you’ll feel like you’re right there along with René in the court of Catherine de Medici.
This is the 6th book in The Reincarnationist series by M. J. Rose but it can absolutely be read as a standalone novel, which is how I read it.
I give this book 5/5 stars.
The Curse by Jennifer Brassel
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
His search for her has been timeless, eternal, and ultimately thwarted. Until now…
Seth Almose has spent countless lives trying to break the curse that robs him of his soul mate. Each time the cycle begins anew, he meets it with hope, and each time he is left with heartbreak. But as the cycle dawns again, with yet another incarnation, Seth can’t help himself. She is extraordinary; is she the one?
Julia Morrow has reason to be wary of men. After restarting her life to escape an increasingly dangerous stalker, she has no reason to believe Seth and his stories of reincarnation and curses. But his face haunts her dreams, and her canvasses. He claims that it is a matter of life and death — her death. Can she find it in herself to trust again, or will the cycle turn once again, leaving them both broken and alone?
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
I really debated requesting The Curse on NetGalley but in the end my curiosity got the better of me. Despite the cliché-filled blurb I thought I’d give this one a chance and approach it with an open mind. After all, I did the same thing to Echo Prophecy by Lindsey Fairleigh and it turned out to be a great book. The Curse isn’t a great book, though. Don’t get me wrong—it’s far from a bad book. It’s simply an average novel with nothing really to distinguish it from similar reincarnation curse stories.
The characters were very well developed. I really felt for Julia having to move and change her name after being stalked for months before the story started. Her behaviour is obviously affected by this incident but with the help of Seth she does seem to recover at a natural pace. She’s strong and brave but at the same time isn’t an unrealistically kick-butt protagonist. Seth was surprising for a male lead in that he isn’t the type of guy to rush out immediately when his beloved is kidnapped. No, he called the police, something that normal human beings would do in that circumstance. That was probably the biggest surprise of the whole novel but in hindsight it fits with his character.
Other than some surprises with the characters, there weren’t really all that many plot surprises. The Curse followed a pretty typical reincarnation story arc where girl starts having dreams, meets boy, they get together after some initial misunderstandings and circumstances or evil forces try to pull them apart. I wish Jennifer Brassel had put more of a spin on the old story arc but she really didn’t. Her story is well-paced and the world-building is relatively good but it’s really just the same old thing I’ve read before.
I would have liked far more backstory not only for the villains of the story but also for Seth and Julia’s past lives. We get flashes of it so we know the basic sketch of the story but I personally would have liked more details. That’s probably just me so I can’t really fault the author for that, though. The only real criticism I have about the backstory is that we didn’t really know very much about the villains and their motivations. I wish the villains had more complex motives than they were presented as having because it would have made the climax far more exciting. Oh well.
So like I said this isn’t a great book but it’s not a bad book either. It’s somewhere in between and if you generally like this kind of stuff I’d recommend The Curse. It’s just that it’s not all that unique.
I give this book 3/5 stars.
Shadows of the Past by Carmen Stefanescu
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
When Anne and Neil leave on a one-week holiday hoping to reconcile after a two-year separation, little do they know that destiny has other plans for them. Their discovery of human bones and a bejeweled cross in the hollow of a tree open the door to the supernatural realm and the anguished life of Genevieve, a nun from medieval England.
Can Anne save her relationship and help Genevieve her eternal rest?
The twists and turns in this paranormal tale keep the reader guessing up to the end and weave themselves together into a quest to rekindle love.
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.]
For me, this book was pretty average. The plot was fast-paced, the premise interesting if not entirely unique and it was generally well-written. The characters were well-developed as well. The main problem I had with this one, however, was the dialogue.
The dialogue was pretty bad. Everyone states exactly what they’re thinking, feeling and what their situation is in perfect English. It’s just not realistic to say something like, “Gerard, I feel that our present situation is intolerable. We are stuck in an automobile in the middle of nowhere in the Rocky Mountains. I am cold and by the expression on your face and your shivers I can tell that you are as well.” That’s my own example, but most examples of dialogue (even for the modern characters) in this book were similar and usually much longer.
Other than the dialogue, this book was fairly well-written. I quite enjoyed the plot with all of the flashbacks to Genevieve’s life in the abbey and the premonitions of Anne in the modern day. The descriptions were vivid and the little details are what really made the story. I won’t speak to the historical accuracy because I don’t know enough about the period, but Shadows of the Past certainly made me feel like I was back in Medieval England.
The character development was very good. I enjoyed Genevieve’s transformation from brow-beaten girl to happy nun to a discontent young woman yearning for love. I also liked Anne’s slow forgiveness of Neil for his transgressions. She didn’t forgive him right away but through their trip in the mountains they bonded at a natural rate. I personally would never have forgiven Neil but I’m glad that the two eventually made up and solved the mystery of Genevieve’s tragic death. The novel was more character driven than most but one thing I would have liked to see was more of a spin on the past life trope. It would have been nice to have some sort of twist but Carmen Stefanescu played this trope straight. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in this case but it would have been nice if the ending hadn’t been so predictable.
So overall, despite my dislike of the dialogue I actually quite enjoyed Shadows of the Past and if it sounds interesting to you I’d definitely recommend it.
I give this book 3.5/5 stars.
Earthbound by Aprilynne Pike
(Cover picture courtesy of All The Stacks.)
Tavia Michaels is the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed her parents. When she starts to see strange visions of a boy she’s never spoken with in real life, she begins to suspect that there’s much about her past that she isn’t being told.
Tavia immediately searches for answers, desperate to determine why she feels so drawn to a boy she hardly knows. But when Tavia discovers that the aunt and uncle who took her in after her parents’ death may have actually been responsible for the plane crash that killed them–and that she may have been the true intended victim–she flees for the safety of Camden, Maine, where the boy she sees in her visions instructs her to go.
Now, Tavia is on the run with no one to trust. No one, that is, except for her best friend and longtime crush, Benson.
Tavia feels torn between the boy who mysteriously comes to her at night and the boy who has been by her side every step of the way. But what Tavia doesn’t know is that the world is literally falling apart and that to save it she will have to unite with the boy in her visions. Only problem? To do so would mean rejecting Benson’s love. And that’s the one thing Tavia Michaels swore she’d never do.
I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. It was a Christmas present from my best friend, who usually has pretty good taste in books. She thought it sounded interesting, I thought it sounded slightly interesting. Why not give it a try?
Except for the fact that it’s a waste of your money, totally and utterly. If you changed the character’s names around you probably wouldn’t notice until about halfway through that the book isn’t Twilight. It’s trite and cliché and the characters were just painful. I was stuck in the viewpoint of Tavia the whole time and began actively cheering for her doom sometime around page 50.
Tavia is what we in the book industry call Too Stupid To Live. She believes her male stalker is not only trustworthy and harmless, but attractive as well! She follows this stalker in an unfamiliar place, not telling anyone where she’s going and all this while she’s on the run from people who want to kill her. Then she puts on the necklace that the voice of her past self in her head tells her to, essentially knowing that it’s going to change her forever and possibly kill her. Too. Stupid. To. Live.
Could the love interests be any blander? Quinn is a stalker, as usual, but Tavia loves him because he’s such a nice stalker! He would never harm her. (Cue eye-rolling.) Benson is such a typical geeky best-friend-who’s-secretly-in-love type that it made me want to throw the book at the wall. I would have but I don’t condone book vandalism. There was no unique spin on him and even at the end when his character supposedly changes I saw it coming a mile away and if you have the misfortune to read Earthbound, you will too.
The plot, oh the plot. It was all over the place, as if Aprilynne Pike couldn’t decide what she wanted to write: a reincarnation love story, a contemporary thriller or an urban fantasy novel. When we finally get an explanation for the Earthbound people my eyes almost rolled out of my head. Triangles being their sign, really? You couldn’t think of anything more original than that. There wasn’t even a new twist on that! Also, Pike needs to do some research about ancient Egypt. She seems to have gotten the First Dynasty mixed up with the Fourth. Oh well, what’s a couple hundred years?
The only reason I finished this book is because I’m incredibly stubborn. It’s not worth your time or the few braincells that are required to read it. There are no redeeming qualities in Earthbound at all so I guarantee this is the first and last book I’ll read by this author.
I give this book 0/5 stars.
Reincarnation by Suzanne Weyn
(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.