Disclaimer: I am one of the MotherTalk reviewers for M.J. Rose's suspense novel The Reincarnationist. I received a free copy of the book and will receive $20.00 Amazon gift certificate in return for this review.

After receiving my copy of The Reincarnationist on Friday afternoon, I read it every spare moment until I finished it on Sunday night. On Sunday morning, my husband asked me what I thought of the book, and I told him "I'm enjoying it, but I can put it down. I wouldn't be reading it so fast if I didn't promise that my review would be up on Tuesday." I had no sooner said that when the storyline took an interesting turn and I had to take the book with me to read in the car while we ran some messages because I needed to know what happened.

I really enjoyed the premise - a traumatic experience allows a photographer named Josh Ryder to flash back to his past lives, and as a result of his investigations into his experiences he gets involved in a modern day search for a treasure) and the mystery is unravelled at a fairly even pace. I did find the ending somewhat abrupt, but that may have been a factor of how involved I had gotten with the characters by that point. The novel, obviously, centers around reincarnation and while I think reincarnation is entirely possible, I haven't really given it much thought before now. I don't think I really thought about how someone dealing with past lives would understand and experience them and this novel was an interesting exploration of that.

I liked how M.J. Rose spins the idea of reincarnation, not suggesting that people are doomed to relive their mistakes, but that the mistakes of the past can inform the present. Of course, people may keep making the mistakes until they learn better, but it doesn't have to happen that way.

This book also hit on a number of my other interests, archaeology, history, and mythology, and she wove those threads into the narrative almost seamlessly*. She has piqued by interest in a number of topics - including the Vestal Virgins - and I will likely end up doing some more reading on them when I finish some of the projects I am working on.

M.J. Rose's physical descriptions of people and scenes were vivid and believable, but at points I felt like she was only scratching the surface of people's characters. At least one character, Rachel, seemed to serve mostly as a plot point rather than a character in her own right. The part she played in helping Josh could have been achieved almost (but not quite) as well by having him read an old journal.

And I was a little disappointed that the author chose not to get a little more in-depth into the characters' past lives and the past relationships between the characters and I felt like some of the loose ends were tied up a little too quickly.

I have seen other people compare it to the DaVinci Code and I think that is valid. Of the two, I prefer The Reincarnationist, though. Rose doesn't seem to need to give as much weight to minute historical details as Brown does, so her novel didn't seem forced in the way that the DaVinci Code did at some points. I think anyone who likes their novels to be steeped in history** while set in the present day will really enjoy The Reincarnationist - I did!

*I'm not sure the artifacts and remains in the tomb that is a central feature in one of Josh's flashbacks would have been dealt with in the way she described - but I've never excavated a tomb, so she may be dead on (dead! ha! Sorry, couldn't resist!).

** I like how books of this sort make me feel smart because I already know a bit about the subjects they are covering - foolish, but hey some days you take what you can get. :P