The Wrong Life by August Smith

Wren is a reincarnated spirit who is about to enter another life when she realises something is missing. Alessandro, the love of her life, always accompanies her to the next. But this time he is not around. In a panic Wren decides to do the unthinkable and steal a life meant for another spirit in order to find him. So begins the wrong life for Wren. Born of a rape she enters into a bleak, post war England to a family living in poverty. Her guiding spirits refuse to help her because of her selfish deed, and Wren must endure the pain of growing up without their guidance. Tested by the harshness of the world from the time she is born, Wren must learn to live while looking for Alessandro. As the years go by and her triumphs and losses pile up-will she ever find him? After all, the world is a really big place to look for one spirit in a body she might not recognise.

This novel is very interesting to critique. Roughly half of the beginning of the book is written in a very formal tone which stretches believability about the way people think and speak. Later on the tone relaxes and the flow of the writing becomes more comfortable. It's as though the author was either very clever when placing Wren in the wrong life to write in an uncomfortable manner and as she moves in a better direction make her life easier to read, or she became more accustomed to her own writing style and was able to write more succinctly. Many editing errors popped up-from punctuation to grammar, to spelling, to consistency and missing words. These definitely had an impact in me marking the book down. Something clicked for me later in the story though. I was battling to process the writer's description of emotions as at times they became sickly sweet and frankly implausible. As Wren goes through life she became more real to me, and while the storyline might make you raise your eyebrows every now and then, once closing the book you find her character and the part she plays in the story resonates in your mind long after.

A book like this stays in your thoughts. Looking at it from a technical level it was not a bad story but I would have marked it down for its length, part of the writing style and the myriad of mistakes. At the end of the book I was so intrigued by the line that the story took that I marked it up again. This is a very subjective book which some might close after the first chapter and others immediately dive into the life that was never meant to be.