L. E. Waters

Maya continues to live her past lives.I was sucked into each story line. As the title suggests, Maya learns devotion in this book and she lives four lives. The lives posed increasing challenges. Compelling, intriguing characters in complex interrelationships make for compelling life stories.. The book has this charts after each story where you can see a correlation of who’s who. When the book is audible, those charts sound like Charlie Brown's teacher: "waaa-waaa, wahh-wahhh." So, I just skip over them and refer to the internet page that the author has constructed. The web page reference on the last life is a series of Irish sayings, not much use in deconflicting the characters, In this case, each life seems disconnected to the others without little bitty hints, so the epilogue is critical to tie the whole book together. I’m curious to know what will be next!… (mere)

This first volume is a collection of short stories--each story is one of the main character’s previous lives as it passes through chronological history. The author did quite a lot of research to support her evolving characters; that's supported by her web site, which helps interpret some of the story in historical context. The main character changes and evolves through time. Since she cannot remember each life as she goes, lessons take a while to sink in, and sometimes you can’t really see how she learns. At the end of each life, a summary of physical characteristics of each character is given--why?. Often, the reader is confused about the themes expected by the author and I felt like each of the four lives were hardly even connected. They connect, but not in the way that the author expects. It all ties up at the end of the book. With that, Waters has piqued my interest for her next book.… (mere)