Unwrapping: Review of LOVE OF HER LIVES by Sharon Clare

Sharon Clare is a new author to me. When she asked me to read and review her newest release, LOVE OF HER LIVES, I read the blurb and thought, wow, this sounds really interesting. Paranormal, reincarnation, a love that survives the ages - this was going to be good.

***eARC provided by author in exchange for an honest and unscripted review.

Blurb for LOVE OF HER LIVES:

Calum and Beth are soul mates who have lived many lives together until Beth decides to live a life on her own. Left behind in the Upper World, Calum sees a wrongful imprisonment in her future, so he bargains with Finn, an elven trickster to return to Earth, rescue Beth and reclaim her heart. Unfamiliar with the twenty-first century, he must determine who plots against her while playing Finn’s passion-provoking game.

Beth has no recollection of their lives together and didn’t ask this sexually-charged stranger to come to her aid. She is horrified to find her house ransacked and her life threatened. With a secret to keep, she takes the greatest risk of all—trusting Calum. Her life soon depends upon re-evaluating everything she thought normal. Their eternal bond will only be saved if Beth can rescue the man who spanned worlds to rescue her.

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Having already lost Bethia to her perilous need to jump head long into trouble and danger throughout her past lives, Calum is determined to save her from trouble even though he isn't of her world this time around. Calum and Bethia are soul mates that play out their bonded love lifetime after lifetime but usually together. In their last life together, their relationship ended in the midst of fight and now that Bethia has chosen to live a life without Calum. Now he fears he may lose her forever. Having seen danger and wrongful imprisonment in Bethia's future, Calum summons an elven trickster to assist him in returning to Earth and prevent her future from coming true. The trickster, Finn, is a trickster indeed and sets down rules and tasks for Calum to follow if he is to succeed. Saving Bethia isn't going to be as simple as Calum thought.

When she finds a strange backpack buried in her yard filled with money and drugs, Beth Stewart knows she might be in trouble but instead of taking the bag directly to the police, she decides to help out a friend whose daughter is in need of cash to escape an abusive husband. After doing her good deed, she returns to discover someone has trashed her house and is still there. When the strange professor from the university, who had come by earlier doing a survey then just as strangely disappeared, comes to her rescue, she never would have guessed the strange journey she was about to embark on with this man who would eventually tell her that they were meant for each other. He insists that they lived many lives as a pair, and loved each other deeply through the ages.

Fascinated by the storyline of LOVE OF HER LIVES by Sharon Clare, I went into this expecting a wonderful story. I believe the story itself is wonderful, romantic and intriguing but reading this book was difficult. Calum is natural in his manner, speech, and concerns. The tricks that Finn plays on him made me laugh and endeared him to me but there were times when I had a hard time following exactly what was happening. I found Bethia annoying until the end when she finally came around to the truth and went in pursuit of Calum - that's as far as I will go with that because I don't want to be guilty of spoiling the story.

Overall, LOVE OF HER LIVES by Sharon Clare was a story idea that had such great potential but, in my opinion, failed because of poor wording, editing, and plotting. The action scenes would seem to just get going and then sputter out. The romance was good but I think it was drawn out too long to give me compassion for the pair. I was truly excited about reading this love story but was disappointed overall.

I wish I could more greatly recommend LOVE OF HER LIVES by Sharon Clare but since I always believe that there is a reader for every book, I believe that some of my readers might be enchanted by this story of a love that survives the ages and the belief that each of us has a soul mate to which we are inexplicably drawn life after life. This one, my dears, I leave up to you.

Happy Reading Everyone!

LOVE OF HER LIVES by Sharon Clare, Crimson Romance, available in ebook formats.