Remembrance

(Source: Purchased from Amazon.co.uk for only 77p!)
16-year-old Lizzie has a great boyfriend, and a great best friend, but when she lays eyes on the gorgeous newcomer at school, everything changes.

Lizzie tells herself that she wants nothing to do with the new boy Drew, but can’t help but feel jealous when her best friend Chelsea starts dating him; especially when her own boyfriend Jeremy seems to be changing in front of her eyes, and not for the better.

Something about Drew just draws Lizzie to him though, even when he tells her that they can’t be together. But love is stronger than friendship, and slowly draws them together regardless. It seems that Lizzie and Drew may have been together in a past life, but things ended badly.
Can Lizzie and Drew make their relationship work? And how many people will get hurt in the process?


I really enjoyed this book, although I felt there was less of the whole reincarnation thing than I expected.

Lizzie was such a sweet girl, and I loved the romance between her and Drew. I totally understood why she didn’t want to be with Jeremy anymore, and I felt that she totally did the right thing with being upfront with Jeremy about how she didn’t want to be with him anymore.
It was unfortunate the situation that Drew and Lizzie got themselves into though, if Drew had never gone out with Chelsea, it would have made things so much easier, and Lizzie wouldn’t have felt like she was betraying her friend quite so much.
I thought the romance between Drew and Lizzie was sweet, and I wished that things could have been simpler for them, but that was not the way it was ‘meant to be’.

I did think that less was made of the reincarnation thing than I expected, from what I had previously read about this book I had some vague idea that it involved righting past mistakes, but I now get that it was more about preventing them from making the same mistakes again, rather than going back in time to fix them. To be honest, the whole reincarnation storyline took a bit of a back seat to me as I just loved the book as a contemporary romance in its own right.

I did like the ending, although I can see that Lizzie and Drew are still going to have many more battles to face if they want to stay together.
Overall; a sweet YA contemporary romance. Highly recommended.
8 out of 10.

This is a wonderful book for a debut author.

Remembrance has a promising concept of reincarnation which I've seen, but the plot was a bit of a disappointment.

The storyline was rather flat, focusing more on the characters' school lives rather than their previous reincarnations in the Regency Era of Jane Austen. 

The lives of the students were more than real and rather funny to read, but I do believe that that was not what many of us were looking for in a book about reincarnation. The characterization was also not strong enough, as Lizzie, Chelsea, Drew and Jeremy all seemed like generalized characters who did not bring out the maximum empathy in readers.

The love between Lizzie and Drew was a tad too unbelievable. There was little if not no love, more like chemistry and attraction, and that only. The way they transit from no love to love happens too quickly. I trust that if there were more scenes between them, we as readers may come to the understanding that their love was inevitable as well. But, in this case, I find myself hard to believe that the feelings blossoming between the two of them is true and undying love.

Despite it all, the idea was great! I loved the constant references to Pride and Prejudice (it's one of my favourite classics), which was a good direction for Remembrance to go in since many of us are fascinated with this time period and the lives of the ladies and gentlemen living in this century. As such, Remembrance should go more into Lizzie and Drew's previous lives and give a stronger reason as to why the two of them were reincarnated. With a stronger reason, we can finally comprehend how their love is timeless throughout the centuries.

However, overall, the story was a good read. The sad thing was that there was no particular point of climax, more like a stretch of narration, hence, giving me the feeling that the story has yet to unfold into its full glamour. When the novel came to an end, the first thought was that the novel had yet come to an end! There were so much more areas to explore and lives untouched!

Therefore, there is no surprise that I am looking forward to the sequel of Remembrance, which hopefully, will patch up the holes and hand us a brilliant plot which has been built up from the first book itself.