The Night Mark - Tiffany Reisz

"Once someone loves you that much, loves you more than you deserve, you can't go back to being loved the normal way."


cw: depression, suicidal ideation


I have a hard time reading outside of my favorite genres, and I was afraid of this book because I am not big on time travel books; however, I do have the challenge to finish and I did enjoy this one. It's terribly romantic and also depressing. The first part is hard to get through if you are depressed. Faye has lost the love of her life, and she finds little reason to go on living. Perhaps it's twisted that I related to her pain and her depression. Thankfully I haven't lost any great loves, but sometimes getting out of bed and functioning like a human is incredibly difficult.

 

I will say Reisz writes really well. I got hooked on her prose, her dialogue is superb, her sex scene was well written, and she really makes you fall in love with her characters, even with the ones that are dead.

 

Yes, the book does suffer from a type of instalove, but given the circumstances, it wasn't too strange though it did make the story feel rushed to me and... messy. Faye travels to the past and meets Carrick, who looks a lot like her dearly departed husband Will, and she falls for him instantly. Thing is Faye is not in her body but in the body of Faith Morgan whom Carrick pines for since he met her. These are two characters that loved other people that looked like them and then fell in love with each other. See? It's super messy.

 

It's like I loved the story but I also feel like Faye didn't finish grieving so much as find a Will-shaped bandaid and that's why I couldn't really give this a higher rating.