Review: The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller

The Eternal Ones
The Eternal Ones #1

Author: Kirsten Miller

Publication Date: August 10, 2010

Publisher: Razorbill

Genre: Fantasy

---

Synopsis:

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.

My Thoughts: All I can say is that as soon as I put this book down I was looking for a sequel and hoping that there was one.  It could have stopped at this book but I just didn't want it to end!  I didn't put this book down from the moment I picked it up.

Haven passes out and says weird things.  It has been happening since she could remember and she had managed to stop them, until now.  After seeing a famous womanizer (Iain Morrow) on tv one day it happens in front of her grandmother, after she called him Ethan - the imaginary boy she has believed she is in love with since childhood.  After that, things get weird(er) and Haven ends up on a whirlwind adventure in New York City to find out who she really is.

I would just like to point out here that I feel really bad for the childhood Haven had.  Her beloved father died in a car crash when she was young, her mother broke down and was sent away for awhile and her crazily religious grandmother took her in.  Her grandmother then deduced that all of her fainting and talking of other lives were brought on by a demon and told the whole town to pray for her - which, in turn, caused her to be completely ostracized.

I love the idea of reincarnation and books that play on that idea.  The magnetic draw to people from their past lives in this series really makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.  Just thinking about it gives me the tinglies.  I also loved the moment when, by fate, Iain and Haven meet for the first time (in this life).  She gets dragged along at his pace and it seems all too soon - but at the same time it doesn't.  Not with memories of Ethan and Constance inter-crossing.

Haven, I should say, acts like detective as she tries to solve the mystery behind the deaths of Constance and Ethan.  She is unknowingly reckless with it and it causes a lot of mistrust between her and Iain.  Iain is mysterious in and of himself.  He tells Haven lies about where he is going and what he is doing - but insists that it is for her protection.  Throughout the novel I was back and forth just like Haven.  Not quite believing all the information she turned up with but at the same time not knowing what to do with it or who to trust.

The ending of this book really got me and I am excited to read the next one.  The world that Miller created drew me into it and made me sad when I had to put it down.  I loved it!