Book Review: My Second Life by Faye Bird

Genre: YA Paranormal Mystery
Publication: January 19, 2016 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Acquisition: read a free eARC via NetGalley

Synopsis:

A pacy pageturner that asks: Can you be held responsible now for something you did in a previous life?

Fifteen-year-old Ana has a good life--she has friends and a boy she likes and a kind mother--but still, she's haunted by her past; she knows that she lived once before as a girl named Emma, and she still misses her old family. When, by chance in her life now, Ana meets a woman she knew in her previous life, a terrifying memory flashes through her mind of a young girl drowning. Was Emma responsible? And should Ana pay the price? Consumed by guilt, Ana sets out to find out as much as possible about the person she was before and what she had done, only to discover that the family she misses so deeply had dark secrets of its own. To come to terms with her life now, Ana must figure out how to let go of the past.

(from Goodreads)

4 / 5 Stars

Very good!

Not my usual read - take away the past life strangeness and it's a teen angst filled contemp and those don't always do it for me.

Add back in that strange past life business and the story takes on a whole different turn.

I love that Ana isn't consumed by her past life - rather, it's just a part of her that she has to deal with. She doesn't tell anyone, she doesn't try to figure it out - it just is.
Sure, her relationships have been affected, but Ana is the only one who knows why. And she just sorta goes with it.

Until! Things happen! Ana's view on her past life changes and all hell breaks loose...in a teen angsty sort of way but still, in a very real life sort of way.

At no time did I question Ana's convictions and at no time did I question why she was doing what she was doing. Emma is a very real part of Ana's life and Emma needs answers.

The paranormal elements is what drew me to My Second Life and the underlying mystery of Emma's life is what kept me reading.
Me = very happy reader.