Loves of Our Lives Review Tour

Blurb:

A rich and compelling novel exploring romances past and present, Loves of Our Lives centers on Katie Benjamin, a happily married woman whose interest in the theory of past lives changes her understanding of herself and the world around her forever.

Along with her best friend, Maria, whose terminal cancer has given her an entirely new perspective on life, she embarks on past-life regression therapy. Here, Katie learns of the lives of Elinor Davenport and Catherine Buchanan and the people they both loved.  In the process of finding these two women who once shared her soul she discovers a sense of completeness she never thought possible.

“The same souls come back to us many times and interact with us. This is the way we can understand our souls go on for eternity. These bodies may fail, but our souls do continue on to reunite with our loved ones many times.”

Excerpt:

“I had this commissioned for you to have. I want you to wear it close to your heart and know my heart is now and will always be yours.” He opened the case and displayed a gold locket. She gasped at the beautiful locket within the case. It was a white cameo in a pale pink background.

“Turn it over,” he said.

She did and read the words he had engraved on the back. Forever in my heart, forever in my soul.

She felt tears running down her face as she looked at the beautiful words and then into Jonathon’s eyes. She looked deep into his eyes and felt her own soul connecting directly to Jonathon. He said to her, “Forever in my heart, forever in my soul. I will find you again.” He then wrapped his arms around her and took her lips in a passionate kiss. Her heart was hammering in her throat as she kissed him back. To her it felt a bit like a good-bye kiss, but a kiss filled with the promise of reuniting in time.

My Review:
3 stars

It took a while for me to get into the story, as it is definitely a slow build in the first part of the novel, but I carried on and continued reading to find a thought provoking and intriguing read. I really loved reading and seeing the research the author did into the topic of past lives, which is what drew me to the story in the first place. I also enjoyed getting to know Katie and Maria, especially Katie. Seeing how she grew and changed throughout the course of the book, questioning her life and pursuing her dreams was a joy.

While this book had a very intriguing premise and was very thought provoking, I did have some problems with it. First, switching between past and present and multiple POVs are two very difficult things to successfully integrate into a story and unfortunately, it didn’t work throughout the book for me. At times the switches were disjointing and hard to follow, causing me to disconnect from the story and characters. Plus, with so many characters being introduced, I felt like a lot of the secondary characters were superficial and just there as set pieces almost.

My second big problem came with the regressions. From what I’ve learned on the topic, the regression scenes in the book weren’t always very realistic, and I found it hard to believe how Katie could regress to the past then come back to the future and suddenly recognize the person from the past in their future life. At times this felt more like a device to keep the plot moving along faster, which I felt a bit cheated by. Plus, I felt that the extended regression scenes were superfluous and should have been trimmed down so the story focused primarily on Katie and Maria.

All in all, this was an interesting book that has a lot of potential and merit. While the story was bogged down with too much going on, it still had a lot of potential and merit. The idea was there, but the execution could use improvement. However, this is the author’s first novel, so I am curious to see how she improves from this novel to the next book in the series and to see what she does next.

*I received this book in exchange for an honest review.*

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Author Bio and Links:

AC Chenier is the author of the Past Lives series of books. The novels explore the fascinating spiritual world and the concept that we are all souls who have lived before, and that we reunite with our loved ones through time. The novels allow her to couple her long standing interest in the romance and fantasy genres with a passion for writing.  When she’s not busy typing away at her computer, you can find her with her horses or golf clubs.

Her books are available in paperback and ebook.

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