The Eternal Ones - Kirsten Miller

The Eternal Ones is the first book in a series by Kirsten Miller. It was published on 19th August by Puffin and the book is 416 pages long.

Plot
Haven Moore has always been different from everyone else she has ever known. At an early age, she began to talk about a place that she had never been to and a man she had never met. She has skills and talents that she never trained to learn. She also has visions of a completely different life and these visions cause her to black out. In the town where Haven lives, everyone is extremely religious and truly believe that her visions are a form of being possessed by a demon.

Haven’s visions are the result of reincarnation. The visions take Haven on a journey to New York, a place she can remember vividly to find Ethan, who now lives in the form of movie star Iain Morrow, the man from her past. Haven has to figure out who she really is and why she is so drawn to a man she has never met. Can she really trust what her heart is telling her or will she end up trusting the wrong man? One wrong move could land Haven in a serious amount of danger and a feud that has been going on for centuries.

What I thought
First off, a big thanks to Becky for giving me this book when we met at an OUP event in London. I had been dying to read it since I heard about it and had read so many good reviews for it. Even though my to be read pile is massive at the minute, I pushed this one up near the top as I had already waited a long time to read it.

Haven was such an annoying protagonist. She had me in two minds throughout the whole book. What bugged me the most about her was how indecisive she was. One minute she was completely in love with Iain and in the next, she didn’t trust him at all and went ahead to believe the worst possible things about him. Yes, she was somewhat sensible being guarded and trying to make rational decisions about what was going on around her. I did understand that she didn’t want to fully commit herself to Iain until she had answers to some serious questions and that maybe diving straight into a relationship with someone she could only half remember would have been incredibly stupid. The rationality behind her choices was what had me torn as to how I felt but in the end, the constant changing was just too much for me.

Iain wasn’t actually in the story all that much. There wasn’t enough characterisation for me to make a decision about him one way or another. Going back to Haven’s split decisions about him, I ended up feeling the same way. I didn’t get to see enough of him on his own or with Haven for me to choose between him being the good guy or him being a complete liar and a creep. If I do read the next book in this series, I hope that he will feature a lot more so that I can find out what kind of a man he really is. I get the feeling that he is really the good guy but I fail to see proof of this as of yet.

Considering Haven had been thinking about Ethan/ Iain for most of her life, the passion that should have been there wasn’t. There were a few moments where Kirsten Miller got my hopes up for something special but they were quickly squished and everything went back to being bland again. I think for me, a tale of a never-ending relationship, a tale of a love that will last forever should be passionate and exciting, especially if you can’t remember all of the details of the past. This may be something that is expanded upon in future books but for The Eternal Ones, this department was extremely lacking.

The beginning of the story was drawn out too much for my liking. It is nice to know about a protagonist’s history and their life, giving the opportunity to really get to know them but in Haven’s case, this wasn’t exactly what happened. A lot of the beginning of the book is about Haven’s visions and the people of the town in which she lives. There is a lot about religion here and this was part of the reason why I didn’t like it. I don’t think that this much time was needed to explain that everyone thought Haven was possessed by a demon. The time could have been put to a much better use by sending Haven to New York earlier and to have seen her have more time with Iain.

Something that I did really enjoy was learning about The Ouroboros Society, a society that helps people like Haven, people who have experienced reincarnation. There is a quite a lot of the history of the society explained and getting to learn about its past and present members was one of my favourite aspects of the book. A lot was covered about The Ouroboros Society and while I loved these parts, again, I think the time could have been put to better use. I always think that the first book in a series should be about setting the scene for the characters and really getting to know them, rather than focus on something else and end up not caring about the people you should.

Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough in this book for me to love. There were hints that it could be fantastic but most of it wasn’t original enough or believable enough, especially in the romance department. If I happen to acquire the sequel when it comes out, I will read it in the hopes that the story and characters get better but I wont be rushing out to buy it. Although there was a lot that I hated about this book, there were also things that I really loved so I'm putting it in Purgatory.