Review: The Eternal Ones - Kirsten Miller

What if love refused to die? 

Haven Moore can’t control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan, and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother’s house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was.

In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is swept into an epic love affair that feels both deeply fated and terribly dangerous. Iain is suspected of murdering a rock star and Haven wonders, could he have murdered her in a past life? She visits the Ouroboros Society and discovers a murky world of reincarnation that stretches across millennia. Haven must discover the secrets hidden in her past lives, and loves¸ before all is lost and the cycle begins again.

When I first received this book from the publishers I wasn't convinced I was going to enjoy it, in fact for the first part of the book I was looking out for things that I didn't like about it. Don't get me wrong, the story sounded interesting enough, but I'd mostly been put off by the comparison to the Twilight books. I'm not a fan of this series for various reasons which I won't go into now, lol. I'd also read somewhere that The Eternal Ones was like a cross between Twilight and The Time Traveller's Wife which kind of put me off even more. I love The Time Traveller's Wife! I didn't want it even in the same sentence as Twilight.

Anyway, thankfully, to me anyway, this book was nothing like Twilight and I really enjoyed reading it. I was hooked almost straight away and between the short chapters - which left me having to read the next one before putting the book down - and flowing writing style, I finished this book much quicker than I expected to. Probably because I was literally carrying it around the house with me, reading as I did other things! There was maybe a little bit too much description for my personal taste (I'm a dialogue and action kind of person) but not enough to put me off and it certainly enabled me to imagine the scenes in great detail.

The characters in this book were particularly engaging. Haven Moore is a bit of an outcast in her home town, largely due to the visions of her past life, as Constance, that she's been having since she was a small child. This is not helped by her Grandmother telling people she has a demon in her. I liked her because she was a little bit kick-ass without being a bitch. She tries to stand up to her overpowering Grandmother but sometimes didn't quite manage it. She was aware that some of the things she was doing were stupid and dangerous rather than being completely naive, but she felt drawn to do them anyway. In a lot of books this doesn't always work but with the past life connection in The Eternal Ones it made sense.

I like how the author portrays Haven's best friend, Beau. More and more YA books are introducing a gay character. Usually I find that this is done in one of two ways: either everything's fine and dandy and this character is completely accepted by all (which although it'd be awesome if this were the case in real life, I doubt it is most of the time) or it's mentioned every two pages, even when it's really not relevant to the plot. In The Eternal Ones, it's mentioned right near the start that Beau's gay, a few characters are bothered about it,  like the priest and Haven's grandmother - which is probably fair enough in small town Tennessee - but that's it. To me that's just right. Beau's sexuality isn't a big part of the plot but it is the reason he's also an outcast in town and so part of the reason he and Haven are friends.

Iain Morrow (formerly Ethan) is a really interesting character to read. Although throughout the book everything points to him being the 'bad guy' I couldn't help but hope that he wasn't and that there was some kind of misunderstanding or set up going on. Obviously I'm not going to give away whether that was the case or not though! Haven flits between believing Iain and mistrusting him and I found I was doing the same. I was constantly trying to work him out.

The Eternal One's is a very interesting concept, there's clearly a lot we don't find out about in this book about the past lives of Haven and Iain (as well as some of the other characters) and I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel which will be coming out next year.

Other reviews of this book:
Daisy Chain Book Reviews
Book Crazy
21 Pages
Can't Find a Bookmark

Read an excerpt here

www.theeternalones.com