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A couple of years ago while browsing through one of my favorite bookstores I stumbled across a novel by an author I’d never heard of. The book was When, the author Victoria Laurie. I was intrigued by the premise, the novel was on sale and so I bought it, read it and loved it. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to review her latest Forever, Again. While not quite as brilliant as her previous story, this is still an expertly crafted YA novel that is sure to please readers of the paranormal genre.
Our tale begins in the bedroom of a teenage girl in present day Virginia. In the center of Lily Bennett’s chest is a birth mark. It’s red, elliptical, but the bottom trickles away from the center, like blood leaking out of her heart. Naturally any teenage girl is deeply aware of every little thing that is wrong with her body but in Lily’s case the mark has something other than mild embarrassment associated with it. Whenever she has the nightmare it burns. The nightmare. The dream she has been having since she was four; the dream where she runs through a field lit by fire but curiously free of smoke. She’s panicked, desperately searching for something important to her. Then she finds him, the beautiful dead boy and she knows she will never be happy again.
Lily understands there is good reason for her to be having the nightmare more frequently now than ever before. Her parents have just gotten a divorce due to her father’s infidelity and she and her mother have been forced to move to Fredericksburg from Richmond in order to make ends meet. They are living in her grandmother’s guest house and Lily will now have to start her junior year of high school in an unfamiliar place. Logically, she assumes stress is behind the increased frequency and intensity of her dream.
At this point in the story, we flip to the tale of Amber Greely, high school sophomore in the mid-1980s. I have to admit I got a chuckle out of her describing getting dressed for the first day of school – wide belt cinching an Espirit skirt and top together, thick socks, high-tops, headband and canary yellow earrings and bracelet. Imagine wearing that today! She’s meeting her friends by the school’s front doors when a projectile nearly knocks her off her feet; she’s saved from grass stains and humiliation by being caught in the arms of a breathtakingly handsome boy. Fortunately, Amber’s cool outfit is the perfect ensemble for being hit on the head by a football and rescued by star quarterback, Ben “Spence” Spencer. It’s the start of an epic romance.
Lily’s first day at that same school is a bit different. No canary yellow earrings, no Espirit skirt, no friends waiting for her by the door. But she is rescued by a super-hot guy. When she finds herself lost in the halls, Cole Drepeau comes to her aid and shows her the way to class. Unfortunately, she makes a major blunder – she calls him Spence. Coincidentally, that’s what his dead uncle had been called.
Naturally, Lily goes home and cyber stalks looks up Cole. She loves his Facebook profile pic but is less comfortable finding that he’s linked to a decades old murder. That uncle whose name was Spence? Shot at his high school prom. Suspicion fell on his date and longtime girlfriend Amber, who apparently committed suicide just a few days later.
Both Cole and Lily are slowly drawn into solving the case of his uncle’s murder, helped along by the fact that Lily’s first visit with a psychologist has said doctor convinced she is experiencing past life flashbacks. As they work to resolve whatever is keeping Amber’s memories from resting, they find themselves facing the same danger that the two teens from the past had tried to defeat – and whose failure to do so had ended in their deaths.
This tale contains a big mix of highs, lows and middle ground. The strengths are the excellent prose, intriguing mystery plot, and fascinating characters. All four of the teens are expertly drawn, with genuine depth to each one. I was delighted with how Ms. Laurie didn’t just create Amber 2.0 and Spence 2.0 but had Lily and Cole be unique individuals, allowing for the very real differences in their upbringings. Amber is a bit of a spoiled princess, the daughter of solidly middle-class parents who indulge her. Lily is not a princess at all, but very much a vulnerable, intelligent young woman who is as concerned about the people around her as she is about herself. Much of what Amber does, Lily would never do. Spence was a boy with a rough life and a lot of responsibilities. Cole is every bit as responsible but as the product of a loving mother he is more secure, more aware and more adult in many ways. The mystery, which leads to a conclusion I only half expected, is revealed in just the right doses to keep you glued to the page to the very end.
The author also does a great job flipping back and forth in the two timelines, revealing something interesting in Lily and Cole’s investigation and giving us details and context through Amber’s PoV.
The lows are the easy acceptance of reincarnation and a touch of the deus ex machina to help us get to our resolution. Cole is conveniently part of an FBI youth training program, making him the ideal teen to get caught up in a past life mystery. I had to roll my eyes a bit at that. Another eye-roll was induced by the way everyone just seems to accept reincarnation as fact. Maybe my skepticism is just too deeply ingrained but I know I would politely leave that shrink’s office and report him! There is no lead up, no searching for other solutions, no research. Just bam! Reincarnated. I’ve read a lot of books with this plot device and it works best when it is handled more subtly, with a touch more doubt expressed by the characters.
The middle ground is where I don’t lower the grade but am a bit disturbed by several plot points. The first of these is the intense love affair between Spence and Amber. There is a difference between dating and obsession, and that line is crossed once one character can’t live without the other and starts talking that way. Most teen romances don’t end in a forever love and they shouldn’t be treated like they might. I didn’t downgrade, but it did ping my radar a bit and made me cautious about giving the book as a gift to a teenager. The loss of love should never result in the loss of life in someone so young and that it did, and that a discussion condemning that didn’t take place left me feeling it would be irresponsible to give this as a present without also including a lecture.
The second disturbing plot point was the endless forgiveness lesson preached in the text. I’ve been finding this a lot in books lately and it disturbs me that this lesson seems to be especially aimed at women. No matter what is thrown at us, we are essentially to be loving and gracious about it. This is becoming a serious issue in real life as well, where an insulted woman is expected to rise above it, while an insulted man is expected to fight back. In this book, the lesson revolves around the near endless blather of forgiving the woman who steals your man that I have seen repeated in so many novels it’s starting to affect my blood pressure. I understand that forgiving and forgetting is a healthy response to any injury done us by another; but I am far less comfortable with the theology that women must constantly seek to reconcile with those around them, regardless of the injury inflicted upon them. It makes me especially uncomfortable that the burden is not shared by both sexes.
Forever, Again is a fascinating, fairly well done tale of reincarnation and fans of the sub-genre will definitely want to pick this up. I recommend caution in sharing it with a young crowd though, for all the reasons stated above.
Grade: B
Book Type: Young Adult
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 14/12/16
Publication Date: 12/2016
I've been an avid reader since 2nd grade and discovered romance when my cousin lent me Lord of La Pampa by Kay Thorpe in 7th grade. I currently read approximately 150 books a year, comprised of a mix of Young Adult, romance, mystery, women's fiction, and science fiction/fantasy.
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.