I sincerely hope this book isn’t indicative of future offerings from ImaJinn books. I applaud the publisher’s effort to bring more paranormal elements into the romance genre, but if this is the best they can come up with, I foresee – even without the benefit of past-life regression to help me – problems in their future. While the premise of this book was interesting, the story suffered from an annoying heroine, a serious lack of communication between the hero and heroine, and an unlikable hero, at least in his past life.

The setting is 1985, New York. Andrea Morrow is an actress with her heart set on New York. As long as she can recall, she has been fascinated with the Big Apple. When she moves to New York from New Jersey to begin her acting career, she begins to have strange visions. She sees people in vintage clothing and remembers landmarks that are no longer there. Andrea puts the visions down to nerves, and hopes they will go away. Thanks to her friend Emilie, a retired film actress, she gets an audition for a TV miniseries. The miniseries chronicles the life of a woman involved in a love triangle. Her husband shot and killed her lover in the early 1900’s. Andrea feels a strange kinship with the lead character, Evelyn, and in a strange way, believes she knew her at one time.

Andrea also feels drawn toward the director, Justin Dinehart, and the leading male actor, Paul Salinger. There is apparently no love lost between Justin and Paul, and after the audition, Andrea has an almost terrifying vision, involving Paul and Justin. Emilie convinces Andrea she needs to see her past life counselor friend, Geneva. Geneva advises Andrea that there are unresolved issues in her past, and she must address them, or there will be problems in the present. Andrea still believes her visions will go away and refuses to take Geneva’s advice.

Andrea continues to flash back to her previous life in 1906. Her past life involves every single person she knows in the present. They are all connected in some way. Not all of the relationships remain the same, but the dynamics between Justin, Paul and Andrea have not changed.

It was sometimes difficult to differentiate between Andrea’s flashbacks and the present story line. The author uses the same names for the characters in the past and present, and their lives parallel each other almost exactly. At some points, I had to stop and figure out which life Andrea was living.

Andrea drove me nuts. She was totally clueless, in both her lifetimes. Even after learning important information in her past life, she made the same exact dumb decisions in her present life. It was only by a stroke of luck at the end of the book that Andrea’s present life took a different course than her past one.

Justin was an uncommunicative jerk in his past life, and many if not all of the problems between him and Andrea could have been solved had they had a decent conversation. His character was only slightly improved in the present. Paul was a total and complete creep all the way around, and his relationship with his wife in both life times was cruel and bizarre.

Because all the conflict in the story was centered on the love triangle, there was very little internal exploration of the characters. Although in Andrea’s case, it probably would not have helped much. In my opinion, she was truly too stupid to live. Justin was a brooding hero, but had potential. Unfortunately that potential was squandered; all he seemed to do was leave the room every time Andrea attempted to talk with him. To make matters worse, this behavior continued over a period of years, not months. Grrrr.

In a minor note, the edition that I read was an uncorrected proof with an abundance of typos. I hope these were corrected in the published version, because they were certainly a problem, although one that is not reflected in the grade. I know ImaJinn has some other book available at this time. My advice is to skip this one and pick up something else in their line instead.