dragonwriter 's review for:

Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

5.0

emotional informative sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Mood: 🥺😭🥰😭😢

Since ancient times, Arden and Evelyn have been reincarnated, destined to fall in love--and then kill each other before their eighteenth birthday. Evelyn only remembers the more recent lives, and occasionally has flashes of her older lives. Arden, however, remembers everything, including why they are eternally bound in this tragic dance. In Wales, 2022, Evelyn finds herself in a life she’s loathe to leave. Her beloved sister, Gracie, has leukemia, and Evelyn is racing the clock to donate the bone marrow she needs for her life-saving transfusion. But if Arden finds her before she finds him, she might not have time to save her sister before the love of her life kills her again.

This is a beautiful, tragic love story that insisted on making me cry every three chapters. It did have a happy ending, but it wasn’t the happy ending I personally wanted, so I was a little miffed. The ending is my only complaint, however, and that is definitely an issue of personal preference and not a comment on quality. I found the reincarnation element to be quite fascinating, since they weren’t locked into reincarnating into specific genders. Sometimes Evelyn was a boy and Arden was a girl, sometimes they were both boys or both girls, and sometimes they were the reverse. Evelyn frequently referred to Arden as “they” since she was never sure what he would reincarnate as, but when they had a discussion about gender ideology, Arden said he felt most comfortable when he was a boy (whereas Evelyn didn’t strictly identify as any gender). But then they would also use “he/she” to refer to each other as well, so I am a little unclear how to refer to them. The chemistry between the pair was palpable, no matter what gender they were presenting as. The fact that they never got to mature past eighteen, yet carried the trauma of fighting in the trenches of WWI and of being locked in a Victorian asylum as women added to the tragedy of their lives. I really liked seeing the flashes of their past selves, seeing how their chemistry presented itself and how they ended. The poetry book popping up in 2022 was utterly sweet--especially when Arden started going through it editing it. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even though it ripped my heart out and danced on it a few times.