pindistress 's review for:

Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

4.0

emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This was an interesting premise. I think my main problem with the book was that I didn’t feel invested in the romance, so when all the emotional stuff was happening, I still didn’t really care that much. We didn’t really get much of how they fell in love or why, so just being told that they loved each other so much despite what they do to each other every life wasn’t really convincing enough. That said, I do think the ending was really good and I like how that was done. It’s a hard premise to write a good plot for a wrap up, and I think it was pretty successful in that regard. For most of the book, the romance just felt icky to me because of the power imbalance - me liking the “enemies to lovers where you don’t know if they’ll kiss or kill each other” only works when they’re on an even playing field, and that wasn’t the case this time. However, I did like the glimpses into their past lives and how varied they were. While this book was more queer than I thought it would be (Evelyn and Arden referred to with they/them when not referencing a specific life, and their incarnations varied in whether they were male or female so they weren’t always a straight couple), it still felt like a very heterosexual lens at some points, with the way Evelyn described their past and future relationships, the classic description of male Arden’s muscles and broad shoulders etc. vs female’s Arden’s soft curves that are so different to being with a man! Also this is just a personal thing, but I struggled to be invested in a romance of such intensity that was still between 17 year olds who spoke like teenagers, even though I knew they were meant to be immortal beings (similar problems with a sex scene that wasn’t very explicit, but still more than I was expecting for YA) But overall the book was still good, and definitely kept me hooked. This was a difficult premise to execute, and I think the author did well in most aspects.