She Must Choose Between Living Her Past and Creating a New LifeApril Robins is a mess. Her diet and wardrobe are disastrous, she’s stopped exercising, and the nightmares are back—nightmares that started at puberty and didn’t stop until she married. Now that she’s divorced, the dreams are worse than ever, and April’s malaise has her cat and her best friend, Trish, worried.April decides it’s time … worried.
April decides it’s time to get her life back in order by running and eating better. She also agrees to attend a class Trish thinks will introduce them to new guys. When April meets the class instructor, Mitch van der Waals, an expert in the paranormal, she discovers they have a lot in common including a mutual attraction. When she and Mitch start dating, both cat and best friend approve.
But when the hospital where April works as a medical technologist hires Dr. Weston, a handsome, new cardiologist, things get complicated. At her first meeting with Dr. Weston, April faints. As he shows more and more interest in her, she finds herself unaccountably affected by Weston, sometimes irritated, other times literally falling into a trance in his presence.
April realizes Weston was a key player in her past lives as she struggles to find the root cause of her nightmares through past life regressions, sessions in the sleep lab, and strangely spontaneous trances.
Does she have a choice between being who she is now and who she seems to have been over and over again?
Solving the mysterious origins of the nightmares that have echoed down through April’s many lives could be a matter of life and death, in this life and beyond.
Readers of romance books about past lives like Angelfall by Susan Ee, The Immortal Rules by Julia Kagawa, and The Steward by Christopher Shields will love this paranormal romance and suspense book.more
I received a complimentary copy of this book for free to give a voluntary honest review. This review contains only my own thoughts and opinions of this book. First of all, I’d like to thank Marilyn J. Evans. Although the story wasn’t much to my liking, I am always honored when an author asks me to read and review their work.
This book could have been something great. The plot and idea behind it was very different from anything I’ve read and the twist ending is not something you’d ordinarily find in a romance story. Anyone who knows me knows how much I appreciate and respect that. Authors who can awe me with originality and passion of their written world is usually what draws me to their art in the first place and keeps me intrigued and invested. Sadly, even if the story was original and unique, it was far from enough for me to see the passion behind it and feel the intrigue. There was nothing to keep me on my toes and invested reading this.
The main reason as to why I could not get invested in it was the fact that very little was actually happening in the story to begin with. Sure, the naked weird protagonist had some bad dreams and a real strange and special cat (I’ll get back to that in a second). But the rest was just … blah. It was following everyday ordinary life with cleaning, work, cooking, class and hanging out with friends (or in this case friend). I don’t know how it is for other bookworms like me out there, but when I read, it is to escape everyday life and forget about it for a while. Not to be thrown right back into it. I mean, if I was interested in following a day of work and doing chores I could just have done it myself in real life instead of reading about it.
The book does not pick up and become somewhat interesting until at least halfway through when we start to learn of past lives and what the dreams actually mean. Though, the author did not really pull her readers into the story and events even then. It felt more like she recapped the events for us rather than actually having us experience it along with the story. There were no depth or detailed descriptions to make it feel important and the story therefore progressed too rushed. So even though I started to get into the storyline and started liking it, the author did not take that extra step to lead me deeper into it and feel for the characters and experience what was happening, to make sure I could fully enjoy it. She just brushed by it instead of actually slowing down and go into depth. She just went back to square one. Yet she made sure I had to sit through boring everyday lectures and work conversations explained into detail instead.
Then we come to personalities. Why I approve of giving the characters a bit of an edge and som unique qualities, they just weren’t relatable or that likable. Their unique quirks just got on my nerves because no one with a sane and realistic mind acts or say stuff like that. They couldn’t have normal hobbies or ordinary fashionable clothes or even good humor. It was always a bit too much in the wrong direction. Give them some unique traits, sure, but not all of them. It’s too much.
And then we have Winston, the cat. No offense meant to the author, but cats don’t in a million years act like that. Cats are not social animals, how cute and cuddly the may appear and sometimes are. This cat can’t handle being alone and he comes running because he missed her when they’ve been apart. He cuddles with her at night to soothe her distress after a nightmare and tries to protect her from threats and danger. A cat in real life would never do that, because their mental capacity is not made to understand others emotions or even care about others (it comes with the whole unsocial nature). The sad truth is that cats only are social and cuddly with the promise for food. That’s how most have learned to get an extra treat. Also a cat would never come to you with a leash in its mouth, excited for a workout. A. Their body is built to run really fast in short stretches, so they don’t have muscles built to handle sprinting longer treks. B. Because they are unsocial creatures they rather be alone and explore and hunt when they are outside. Putting it on a leash and forcing the cat to be near you at all times and deciding where it should go (even having it on a leash alone on the front porch with minimal space to move and go) is miserable and in my book, borderline abuse. Winston behavior is much closer to a dog than a cat, so maybe Winston just should have been written as a dog instead. That would have been much more realistic and believable.
Overall, I feel that this book should be at on and a half star, but since it isn’t possible to rate it with half stars I’m putting it at two stars in total. This book could use some work and changes, but it was not all bad. The writing was okay and I did enjoy the journeys to the past, even if the characters unrealistically suddenly could do it without struggle or a learning process.
Independent reviewer for Archaeolibrarian, I was gifted my copy of this book.
And I gotta be honest here, it was very touch and go whether I would actually finish this!
The story tells of April, and Mitch and Weston. April only has her say here, and I would probably have enjoyed in more if the guys had had a say.
April and Winston have history, ancient history. And through time, they have, according to Weston, found each other and lived long and happy lives. But something doesn’t ring true for April and she uses Mitch skill at hypnotherapy and past life regression to finally get some answers.
Like I said, touch and go for a while. I got way past half way, and I still wasn’t able to figure out what was going on, and where this was going. But I kept at it, hoping it would make sense at some point. It did, but only once it was all revealed in the book.
It’s not overly explicit, but there is some violence when they talk about how it all began. It’s well written and I saw no editing or spelling errors.
It just didn’t work for me.
But for a first time author, well done.
3 solid stars
**same worded review will appear elsewhere**