text: On Writing: February 2017
  Review for "Echo" by Lorena Glass
  Echo by Lorena Glass is an epic love story spanning centuries and places, detailing the eternal connection of two souls bound by love, and suffering, and destined to be joined and separated over and over again. Themes of relationships, love, duty and honor are woven together using threads of time travel and drama to create a powerful story that speaks to a part in all of us, however small, that delights in true connections between people that can transcend our understanding of what love is.
  Now initially I was skeptical about this book, as I am with all romance books or stories with strong themes of love, but the other aspects of this book, time travel, experiencing different cultures from different time periods, made me intrigued, and I do try and push outside of my comfort zone. I took a chance on this book and as not disappointed. We first meet Karissa, a girl who time travels to find her lost love, and the depths of her devotion to him, to what they had, is so poignant in the book, so beautifully articulated that even the most cynical can emphasis with her. As the story develops, the characters are well flushed out and so relatable I felt my heart break along with theirs, and swell when their love was at its height.
  The first iteration of this relationship was magical, it was so well thought through and enough time and care was given to grow their intimacy naturally, however as these two souls continue to travel through time to find each other again the following relationships are given less and less time to season organically, instead I felt as if they were rushed quicker and quicker as the narrative went on. This was really my only criticism, and its because the first relationship was so well developed I wanted to know and understand each subsequent one in the same way, but their stories felt rushed. Of course there was purpose in this, Glass has set this up as a trilogy and obviously a certain amount of progress had to be made before the book could end, however I wish I could have gotten to know the other characters as well as I knew the first two.
  Saying so, though, does mean that Glass has achieved what all authors crave; for their readers to connect with and become invested in the characters they create. The story is simple, but compelling, rich in the breath of human emotions, and their capacity to love, and this is coming from someone who is contemptuous of the genre. This book is highly worth the investment, and I look forward to the rest of the trilogy.