Deja Vu Lover by Phoebe Matthews

TITLE: Déjà Vu Lover
AUTHOR: Phoebe Matthews
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 71k)
GENRE: Reincarnation romance
COST: $6.00

April isn’t exactly driven in her life. When her three best friends finished college, she dropped out in order to stay with them. With a small inheritance, she’s able to pay enough bills to keep a roof over her head without worrying too much about finding a full-time job. And men don’t seem to stick. So when she blacks out on a Seattle street corner and imagines herself back in the life of a young struggling actress, complete with horrific death, she has no idea what to do with it. The notion of a past life is totally foreign to her. Except it happens again, and again, introducing her to this woman’s love life as well. Then, she meets a man in the present day who smiles exactly like the man in the past. Her heart trips. And she can’t help but bring herself to find out if the doomed love affair she keeps reliving can be rekindled…

For anyone who actually pays attention to my scoring rubric, you’ll notice that there’s a slight deviation from the norm. I’ve specified heroes, in the plural. Don’t worry, that doesn’t make this a ménage. But with the exploration of the heroine’s past life, there ends up being multiple heroes in this unusual romance instead of the usual one.

I call this unusual, mostly because all the way until the very last chapter, I wasn’t actually sure it was a romance. This is the story of April, told in 1^st person from her perspective, as she experiences her first past life flashback and then what she conceives as her first love. In spite of the rather grim memory that sets all this into motion, there is a whimsy to the entire story that perfectly reflects its narrator. April is a little bit ditzy, a little bit irresponsible, a whole lot ethereal. She lacks direction and thus just kind of floats along in her life, anchored only by her more responsible friends, or two of them, at least. She’s the kind of character that could get annoying very fast if her characterization wasn’t so delicately handled, but instead, she comes across as sweet and charming in that forgetful kind of way that reminds me of an early Goldie Hawn. It wasn’t long at all until I was just as devoted to her as her friends, so it was very easy to get swept along into her story.

As April discovers more of this previous life, her friends become increasingly involved. They try a regression group first, then start helping with more practical matters such as the logistics of this young actress April supposedly was. Throughout all this, April falls head over heels for Graham Berkold, a professor who she is convinced is Laurence, the actress’ lover. Graham is older, more worldly, and oops, married, but they start an affair that leaves April gasping for breath. Her friends worry about her, for good reason, because soon, April is making the same mistakes her previous self did, and the tale begins to take on a car crash mood. You know what I mean. The kind of mood where you can see the accident on the horizon, and know it’s inevitable, and scream at the driver to avert it, but he’s either deaf or you’re mute because you’re stuck in this track, no matter what. It’s a sense of inevitability that swirls and grows and leaves a big knot in the pit of your stomach. That was how I was left feeling as I watched April travel this path. Because I could see every mistake she was making, but was powerless to stop it.

I said at the top of this review that I wasn’t sure while I was reading that this was a romance, but it is, complete with an HEA that made me delightfully happy. It was the ending I was rooting for throughout the story, though didn’t honestly think I could get. I do think more could have been done to give it more of an emotional impact, because so much is spent on winding April up, some things fall to the wayside. But that’s a minor flaw for me in an otherwise incredibly enjoyable read. I plan on buying this one in print, that’s how much I enjoyed it.

Readability	9/10 – Occasionally, the transitions to her previous life memories weren’t terribly smooth, but I got so sucked into this, I couldn’t stop.
Heroes	7/10 – Impossible to delineate any one personality for this score, the lower number is due to likeability rather than flatness
Heroine	9/10 – Ditzy and free-spirited and a disaster waiting to happen
Entertainment value	9/10 – Delightful even as gradually gets darker and darker
World building	9/10 – The only place that didn’t feel as real to me was the present day Seattle, surprisingly enough
TOTAL:	43/50

My Valentine by Annie Dean

TITLE: My Valentine
AUTHOR: Annie Dean
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 82k)
GENRE: Reincarnation erotic romance
COST: $ 7.99

Two couples, separated by time, bound by destiny. In England, 1821, Lady Beatrice gives a hunted man shelter, only to discover that the heart she thought incapable of passion simply needed the right touch to ignite. For his part, Ren finds a woman capable of seeing past the façade, for the man he dares not be. But circumstances are not kind, even after love blossoms.

Almost two hundred years later, strong and independent Maya Hanoush is about to lose the best friend she ever had, the only man to make it past her brittle front. Darnell doesn’t remember not loving the beautiful Maya, but he’s tired of being second best.

Things are about to change.

Technically, this story works in conjunction with Dean's The Average Girl's Guide to Getting Laid, taking two secondary characters and giving them their own romance. However, it's given a very different treatment than I usually read, and doesn't actually require reading the first book to understand (though your appreciation of the second part will definitely vary, I think, if you haven't).

The story starts out in England, early 19^th century, at a young man's sixteenth birthday party where darker tendencies and a morose personality are hinted at. In walks a slightly older, plain jane young woman and a drinking binge turns into groping, turns into more, and her virtue is taken. The characters are sharply drawn, each fascinating in their own right. The story then jumps fifteen years, raising the questions that drive the rest of the first part: Where is the fallout? What happened?

It doesn’t take long to find the story's rhythm again, which is actually the novel’s greatest strength. Life breathes in the minutiae of Beatrice’s life, and when the hunted man she shelters enters the picture, I’m enthralled again.

I can’t, however, say I’m surprised from that point out. It’s very clear to me from the get-go just who this man is, what exactly is haunting him, how it all intertwines with Beatrice. I almost feel that I would have enjoyed the shock of it more if the prologue never existed. As it stands, it pretty much tells the reader the facts she needs to fill in the blanks when the characters refuse to.

But that’s not why I devoured Beatrice and Ren’s love story. I fell for their pain, for their very real need for each other. I loved how we saw glimmers of just how dark Ren could be, and how Beatrice both tempered and drew that out. It was a punch in the gut when part one ended, and I was more than a little furious with Beatrice for doing what seemed rash, even by her new standards. But it was done. And I still had part two to read.

I have to confess that I didn’t remember a lot about Darnell and Maya from The Average Girl’s Guide to Getting Laid except that Darnell had a huge thing for Maya, she was beautiful and unattainable, and that Ash (the hero in the first book) had slept with her. Once I realized they were the couple in part two, I pulled out my copy of Guide and skimmed over their parts, refreshing my memory. And you know what? I’m still not convinced Darnell is a big enough character for this particular story. Of the four principles, I think he’s the weakest drawn, and while he’s likable, he doesn’t elicit the same intense feelings the other three do. He’s the nice guy. That’s not a bad thing, but in this case, being the nice guy just isn’t enough.

The other disadvantage the second part has to the first is its length. The relationship between Darnell and Maya isn’t as richly explored as Beatrice and Ren’s. In fact, the entire ending felt very rushed to me. After everything I had invested, after needing so desperately to have a happy ending for the lovers I thought deserved it, it got truncated to a few pages that skimped on what seemed like very pivotal details. I don't remember any indication of Valentine's Day being significant in the first part of the story, so when Darnell and Maya are having flashes of it being very important that something happen by then, I got confused. It never really got explained for me.

Does it mar my satisfaction with the story? A little bit, yeah. Does it keep me from recommending the story? Absolutely not. Dean’s skillful writing and her provocative characterizations make her one of the most consistent e-authors I’ve found.

And Ren will haunt me for a long time to come.

Readability	9/10 – Completely sucks me in, regardless of time period.
Heroes	8/10 – Darnell never interested me as much, but Ren’s dark side and masochistic behavior hooked into my gut and never let go.
Heroines	8/10 – Both strong women, though Maya’s exploration gets a little short-changed by the shorter second part of the story
Entertainment value	8/10 – The first story broke my heart, but I never completely bought the seams stitching it to the second half, though it was enjoyable enough.
World building	9/10 – Dean works like a pro, committing 100% to whatever world she is attempting to create.
TOTAL:	42/50