My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Reincarnation is a subject that has been done to death in almost all languages of Indian movies and growing up with them, thought that it would probably bore me to death but surprisingly, Mariana is a sweet and touching story of a heartfelt love and completing the circle of life. Susanna Kearsley has a unique style of writing that grabs a reader even though the plot might feel oh hum coz one might have read enough of time travel romances. But I still love the tension that comes with the re-incarnation theme and the whole recognition of your soulmate. Mariana had a bit of an abrupt ending when a couple of pages could have eased the story better.

Julia and Mariana are both very warm and kind characters and it was easy to feel for them. There’s history, there’s love, there’s an old cottage which anyone would fall in love with, there’s a bit of mystery, so suffice it to say it had everything that made me devour the book.



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From the winner of the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize, this mesmerizing, suspenseful, and richly atmospheric tale of time travel draws us into the heart of a heroine we won’t soon forget…

The first time Julia Beckett saw Greywethers she was only five, but she knew at once that it was her house. Now, twenty-five years later, by some strange chance, she has just become the new owner of the sixteenth-century Wilshire farmhouse. But Julia soon begins to suspect that more than coincidence has brought her there. As if Greywethers were a porthal between worlds, she finds herself abruptly transported back in time. Stepping into seventeenth-century England, Julia becomes Mariana, a beautiful young woman struggling against danger and treachery, and battling a forbidden love for Richard de Mornay, handsome forebear of the present squire of Crofton Hall. Each time Julia travels back, she becomes more enthralled with the past, falling ever deeper in love with Richard…until one day she realizes Mariana’s life threatens to eclipse her own–and that she must find a way to lay the past to rest, or risk losing a chance for love in her own time.