Book Review : Remembrance by Michelle Madow

“What we have is strong enough to transcend time. I’ve never trusted anything more in my life.” 

                                                                                           – Michelle Madow, Remembrance

 

 Synopsis: New Hampshire high school junior Lizzie Davenport has been reincarnated from Regency Era, England … but she doesn’t know it yet. 

Remembrance is the debut novel in Michelle Madow’s Transcend Time Saga. Since I started book blogging, I’ve heard a lot about Michelle and have been very impressed by her success. So, when Michelle put the Kindle version of Remembrance on sale for Black Friday I couldn’t resist.

Remembrance tells the story of Lizzie Davenport, a junior in high school who feels an instant attraction to the new guy in school, Drew Carmicheal. It turns out their love is a blast from the past about to make Lizzie’s life a lot more complicated.

I had such high hopes for this book, the plot sounds pretty amazing, but overall I was let down. This book falls into the insta-love category. I mean you could argue its because they are destined, but it was still off-putting.

The way the romance came about reminded me so much about Twilight and not in a good way. It started with Lizzie seeing Drew and falling in insta-love,  him being a jerk to her in class and he tells her to stay away from him because he’s dangerous. Drew didn’t come full circle for me and he reminded me of the “Ya know your mood swings are kinda giving me whiplash” line in the Twilight movie.

The whole reincarnation storyline takes a huge backseat. It wasn’t used as much of a major point in the story as it could have been and I was so disappointed. I was expecting these epic flashbacks filled with mystery and slowly unraveling the story, but we got more telling than showing. Reincarnation is a relatively new idea and I wish we spent more time exploring that.

All the characters came off as paper-thin and one-note. Lizzie’s personality only seemed to be shaped by the people around her and she was very replaceable.

I will say, Michelle has a pretty good writing style and I love how she connects with her fans and includes all kinds of “behind the scenes” stuff on her blog. You can see a post on Michelle’s dream cast for Remembrance, pictures of places where key scenes took place, and a guide to the cars of Remembrance. I have to say these images in the dream cast were exactly as I saw the characters.

The book is a part of what she calls the Transcend Time Saga and I’m not sure how this story is going to play into a saga. A saga is supposed to be an epic story and with a novella and one more book coming out, I’m not sure how much of a saga this will be. The book seemed pretty cut and dry, it could have been the end. I will probably read more to see if Madow’s storytelling evolves more.

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