A casual bookstore browser may be lured into buying Ferney because its cover emphasizes its resemblance to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. Ferney is a good, compelling read, but it’s nothing like Outlander. There is no time travel here, but there are lots of past lives. If anything, it bares a passing resemblance to Jude Deveraux’s Remembrance.

Rich in English history, the book centers on the exploration of the past lives of two different characters, Ferney and Gally. Since Saxon times, they have been returning to new bodies after they die. They have lived through many changes, but their devotion to each other remains steadfast.

Their reincarnation is connected to the local geography of Penselwood, the village in which they have lived most of their “lives.” As the book begins, Ferney, who is an elderly man, has been searching for Gally for years, because she died and was born again elsewhere. A young Gally finds her way to Penselwood, and becomes enchanted with a cottage there. She and her husband (who is not Ferney) buy the cottage.

In most of their other lives, Ferney and Gally remembered who they were and what they meant to each other. But Gally’s non-Penselwood birth confused matters. All her life she has had horrible, crippling nightmares, but she never understood why. Now as she meets Ferney, she unravels secrets of the past and comes to understand the sources of her fears.

The basic theme of the book is Gally’s self discovery, but the underlying conflict is between Ferney and Gally’s husband Mike. As Gally remembers the past, she grows closer to Ferney, which complicates her relationship to her husband. If you abhor reading about infidelity of any kind, this may really bother you.

While a lot of the book centers on the Ferny/Gally/Mike conflict, the most interesting and vivid parts are the forays into history. They mostly take place as shared remembrances, and they make several time periods come alive. The historical detail is really what makes the book so compelling and hard to put down. The secrets of the past are revealed very gradually, which also heightens the tension and keeps the pages turning.

The flaw in this book lies in the ending, and I can’t really explain how without giving away the entire book. Let’s just say that I found it abrupt, and I almost felt like the book wasn’t finished. I wouldn’t say that it ruined the entire book for me, but it did detract from a read that was superior in almost every other way.

This isn’t a romance, but it is a romantic story about the timeless devotion two people share. If you are intrigued by the idea of interlinked past lives and enjoy richly detailed history, this book might very well be worth your while. But if nice, neat endings are a requirement for you, you might want to look elsewhere.