Blog Tour! Transcendence by CJ Omololu

Title: Transcendence
Author: CJ Omololu
Publisher: Walker & Company
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: ARC provided by Publisher

When a visit to the Tower of London triggers an overwhelmingly real vision of a beheading that occurred centuries before, Cole Ryan fears she is losing her mind. A mysterious boy, Griffon Hall, comes to her aid, but the intensity of their immediate connection seems to open the floodgate of memories even wider.

As their feelings grow, Griffon reveals their common bond as members of the Akhet—an elite group of people who can remember past lives and use their collected wisdom for the good of the world. But not all Akhet are altruistic, and a rogue is after Cole to avenge their shared past. Now in extreme danger, Cole must piece together clues from many lifetimes. What she finds could ruin her chance at a future with Griffon, but risking his love may be the only way to save them both.

Full of danger, romance, and intrigue, Transcendence breathes new life into a perpetually fascinating question: What would you do with another life to live?

My thoughts: 

There’s just something so versatile about the topic of reincarnation. And there is so many things that authors can do with it! I haven’t read many books dealing with reincarnation but my fascination with the theme continues to grow! I would have to say that Transcendence is one of the best reincarnation books I’ve read yet! I loved the setting, the characters, the story line and the little surprises that were thrown in here and there!

The basic storyline of Transcendence is that everyone is reincarnated throughout the centuries and those who are able to remember their past lives are called the Akhet. The Akhet don’t start off remembering everything but during one of their lifetimes they begin to remember their past lives. In Transcendence, Cole begins to remember bits and pieces of her past lives while she is on a trip to London. Soon it becomes clear that an acquaintance from one of her past lives is trying to exact revenge on her!

Cole is a pretty awesome character! She’s going through life like a normal teenager except she’s a brilliant cello player and then she starts remembering scenes from her past lives. My favorite of her past lives is when she is beheaded in England during the Tudor era. She’s also very naive but I don’t mean this in a bad way. The whole notion of the Akhet is so very new to her that she thinks is strange that someone could hold a grudge against her for so long.

Griffon, the guy she meets while in London, acts as her guide through becoming Akhet. He is so cute and as a reader, I could tell that he really liked her right from the beginning. What I thought was the most amusing was his relationship with his mom. Since his mom is also Akhet, he called her by her first name and she only acted as a hands-off guardian, allowing him the freedom to do as he pleased. Although I really loved the story, I felt like Griffon held back too much information from Cole which kind of left her one her own to figure out certain things.

There are so many elements that I love about this story! I do have to say that the old English flash backs were so of my favorites! I have to give Transcendence 4 hearts for really incorporating a lot of surprises into this story!