Thursday, February 18, 2016

In Another Life

I promise you that very soon I will have non-book review related posts for you, but today... it's a book review post! I've gotten some serious reading done in my insomnia plagued evenings so I've been on a roll.

In Another Life - Julie Christine Johnson

Historian Lia Carrer has finally returned to southern France, determined to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. But instead of finding solace in the region's quiet hills and medieval ruins, she falls in love with Raoul, a man whose very existence challenges everything she knows about life--and about her husband's death. As Raoul reveals the story of his past to Lia, she becomes entangled in the echoes of an ancient murder, resulting in a haunting and suspenseful journey that reminds Lia that the dead may not be as far from us as we think.

Steeped in the rich history and romantic landscape of rural France, In Another Life is a story of love that conquers time and the lost loves that haunt us all.


Can we all just take a minute and marvel at the cover and admit it's absolutely stunning? This is one of those covers where you have facing out on your bookshelf because it's just so pretty and beautiful. The great part is that the cover is only the tip of the iceberg for this book because the story itself is equally as beautiful. Normally I have a hard time getting into books that have a setting in another country (this one is set in France) but the writer does such a good job at describing everything so you really feel like not only have you been there before, but you're there right now in the middle of it all.

We have Lia, who finds herself back in France after the death of her husband. Struggling to rebuild but also to identify who she is as a widow, she meets Raoul. Unexpectedly falling in love, Lia tries to reconcile these feelings alongside of her feelings of grief by her husband's passing and I think it's a really great inner struggle that we would all feel. You don't want to betray your chosen life partner, but you know that life is going on without them and you want to be happy, but it's this back and forth. Well, it would be easier if she wasn't thrown into the puzzle of a long ago murder, and as a historian, she finds herself compelled to figure out.

There are so many interesting elements to this book that I think could appeal to many different readers. It's a historical fiction, it has themes of the afterlife and are they ever really gone, you have the murder mystery, you have a romance going on, and you have a really terrific writing style pulling every genre together expertly. It was so well done that it makes up for the semi-slow start to the book. Once you get through that and get to the meat of it, the rest of the book more than makes up for it and again, the writing is really well done.

As of this morning, it appears that In Another Life is on sale on Amazon for under $10, so this is really a good deal for a book I think you're going to enjoy. In the meantime, you can find Julie on her website, on Facebook, and of course, on Twitter. Happy reading, lambs!

1 comment:

Susannah said...

Sounds like an interesting book! I'll have to see if the library has it!