You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO is from Em, who wants to find a pretty cool book, though I doubt its a romance given from the description:
I’m not altogether sure if the story I’m thinking of even came in book form, but I haven’t been able to find it again in other media, so I thought I’d give it a shot here.
Basically it’s a reincarnation story. These two lovers repeatedly reincarnate and meet one another, but only one retains the memories in each lifetime. I remember this gist and the twist (both of which are revealed at the end of the story), but I’m not sure if I’m remembering the set-up of the first part correctly.
In present day, the girl (I think?) meets someone she’s drawn to, but she doesn’t know why. The guy seems to know her, and is trying to get her to remember him. Things happen, blah, and then eventually, when the girl gets the memory of her past life back, she gets murderous and kills him. It turns out that she remembered him killing her in the previous life, where he was the one without the memories. So basically, each lifetime, one retains memories but forgets they murdered the other in the previous one (satisfaction from revenge?), and only remembers the “true love,” while the other has no memories until the point where it all comes back and he/she remembers being killed, so he/she kills in revenge and continues the cycle.
Whew. Now that I’m writing this down it’s definitely doesn’t sound like a romance novel, but hopefully someone recognizes it!
I feel like we had a recent reincarnation HaBO, but I don’t think it involved any murdering.
Is it Linda Howard’s Lake of Dreams?
Could this be Lake of Dreams, a novella by Linda Howard? A woman has these dreams of her and a lover in ancient times. The lover drowns her in her dreams. She goes to the family lake cottage for a short vacation and meets the man in her dreams. It is a reincarnation story and it does have an HEA.
My Name is Memory by Anne Brashares? From Goodreads:
Daniel has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Sophia (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together-and he remembers it all. Daniel has “the memory”, the ability to recall past lives and recognize souls of those he’s previously known. It is a gift and a curse. For all the times that he and Sophia have been drawn together throughout history, they have also been torn painfully, fatally, apart. A love always too short.
Interwoven through Sophia and Daniel’s unfolding present day relationship are glimpses of their expansive history together. From 552 Asia Minor to 1918 England and 1972 Virginia, the two souls share a long and sometimes torturous path of seeking each other time and time again. But just when young Sophia (now “Lucy” in the present) finally begins to awaken to the secret of their shared past, to understand the true reason for the strength of their attraction, the mysterious force that has always torn them apart reappears. Ultimately, they must come to understand what stands in the way of their love if they are ever to spend a lifetime together.
I’ve read it. They do kill each other in some lives, but not exactly the same as your description. Not a romance, for sure.
Sorry — that should be Ann Brashares…
Lake of Dreams is being released as an ebook next month. Price is $1.99. *Click*. 🙂
Remembrance by Jude Deveraux has a similar plot. Only the guy supposedly killed the heroine in their previous lifetime. But I remember their lives always ended tragedy whenever they get together.
* ended in tragedy
—-
Bestselling romance writer Hayden Lane has found her soul mate – or rather, created him: he’s her latest fictional hero. And she’s totally obsessed with him. Barely noticing when her real-life fiance breaks their engagement, she visits a psychic to learn more about him – and is told that in a past life Hayden was Lady de Grey, a promiscuous woman of Edwardian England. Hayden can’t resist submitting to a hypnotist’s magic. But the trick goes wrong, and instead of merely remembering her past as Lady de Grey, Hayden is living it. Now she will discover quite a different story about a woman history considered a trollop, a spectacular, brooding man, and the rapturous love that would be hers if she dared open her heart to the most mysterious adventure of all.
Reading the novel, you’ll find they had a previous life from the Lady de Grey one, which would be the reincarnations without HEA. And there’s a monkey involved too. 🙂
Could it be Threads: the reincarnation of Anne Boleyn by Neil Gavin?
This bit’s from Amazon: “In 1536, Henry and Anne are at the mercy of influences outside their control, explosively incompatible, and caught in a marriage that ends in betrayal so shocking that Anne requires lifetimes to recover.
Henry, seemingly in defense of Anne (but more likely acting out of “stubborn perverseness”, she observes), terrorizes England and decrees widespread political murder in order to protect her. Ultimately, to Anne’s horror, this once passionate husband turns on her and has her executed as well.
Threads, a reincarnation fantasy, opens with Anne’s execution. Her fury at her husband’s betrayal has enough momentum to survive centuries, but in Threads she learns that she has been assigned a hard task: she must review their history together through a number of past lives, and find it within herself to forgive him. This may prove difficult and take some time. The husband in question is Henry Tudor, the notorious Henry VIII. The narrator is the stubborn, volatile Anne Boleyn, who is not at all inclined to forgive.”
Hope you find the one you want!
It’s definitely not Mary Luke’s The Nonesuch Lure, but I wanted to put that out there, in case anyone’s interested in a good reincarnation romance. I loved this as a teen. A beautiful, compelling portrait, a mysterious evil force, two lovers separated by time, coming together again in three different historical periods. It’s probably dated, but I loved the history, starting in present day Williamsburg VA and going back to Henry V111
There’s a book out there called The Search for Grace: The True Story of Murder & Reincarnation, by Bruce Goldberg. From the description:
How would you feel if you found out that your present lover had killed you in more than 20 of your previous lifetimes? Now consider that an independent researcher has verified the names, dates, and places you told your therapist in hypnosis―facts that were physically impossible for you to have known.
This is exactly what happened to Ivy, a 26-year-old pharmacist, who sought the help of Dr. Bruce Goldberg to put a stop to her unexplainable attraction to John, her abusive boyfriend.
When Ivy recounts the details of her past life as roaring-twenties party girl Grace Doze, hypnotherapy and real life dovetail into a dramatic twist of fate.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Search-Grace-Murder-Reincarnation/dp/1567183182
It sounds like it could be Remembrance by Jude Deveraux.
My other idea is Demon Angel by Meljean Brook:
“Once a knight and now a Guardian, Hugh spent centuries battling demons—and the cursed, blood-drinking nosferatu. His purpose has always been to thwart the demon Lilith, even as he battles his treacherous hunger for her. “
A more recent option could be Kristin Miller’s “The Eternal Ones” which I love and will now spend tonight re-reading.
From the description: “Haven Moore can’t control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother’s house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was.
In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is swept into an epic love affair that feels both deeply fated and terribly dangerous. Iain is suspected of murdering a rock star and Haven wonders, could he have murdered her in a past life? She visits the Ouroboros Society and discovers a murky world of reincarnation that stretches across millennia. Haven must discover the secrets hidden in her past lives, and loves, before all is lost and the cycle begins again.”
**My bad: the author is Kirsten Miller
I may need to try reading a good reincarnation story since the Fallen YA series soured me to the concept with all the angsty angst of angstitude.
@cleo – on second thought, it may not be Remembrance because Remembrance does have an hfn, and I don’t think the details fit. It is a crazy sauce reincarnation romance though.
There is a movie with this theme. Its got Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson in it (back in the day when they were married). Its called Dead Again.
Kresley Cole’s Dreams of A Dark Warrior?
I have a very vague recollection of there being a reoccurring reincarnation/murder plot in Jan Siegal’s book Prospero’s Children. There’s no HEA, but there’s 3 books in the series so it’s probably not that anyway. I don’t remember the books clearly at all but I do remember I absolutely hated the end.
I’m with @SusanK, Linda Howard for the win.
And it is definitely NOT Demon Angel.
This Time for Keeps by Kathleen Kane? Or something by Teresa Medeiros? I believe she wrote a 2 or 3 book set, one was the parents, then next one their daughter. Can’t remember the book names.
Reminds me of The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel. Although I read it eons ago and can’t remember if there’s a HEA or not.
@The Eleventh Hour- when I first read the headline of this post, My Name is Memory was the book I thought of- not that I remembered the name or the author. Glad you were on top of it so I didn’t have to try googling “reincarnated star crossed lovers with an intentional heroin overdose.”
Side note: I was looking at Remembrance on Goodreads, and read the bio of Jude Deveraux. Her 8 year old son died in a motorcycle accident, and now I’m really sad.
This sounds like a Kay Hooper book http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Laura-Kay-Hooper/dp/0553571850.
THe male character remembers all the past lives he’s had with the female character but she doesn’t. She’s drawn to him for reasons she can’t name but once they find each other and have this mirror, she can remember some of it.
I jumped the gun and just read the first part — definitely not the Kay Hooper book based on the murdering part.
Definitely not the book Em is looking for, but for anyone who’s interested, the manhwa “Replay” by Riang Ryu has similar elements (reincarnation and a romance that is distinctly on the dark side).
Okay wow I didn’t expect to get so many possibilities, thank you all so much! I kind of want to read all of them, reincarnation might be surprise!catnip for me. Nothing is really jumping out at me from the descriptions, but I’m sort of narrowing down what I remember from the suggestions. I think it was set in present times (the only past bits are when she remembers all their previous lives at the end), I don’t think there were paranormal elements, definitely fiction so probably not The Search For Grace even if the tone seems similar. Hm, the closest ones might be Lake of Dreams or My Name is Memory, I’ll try those first.
Also @K: Oh, I remember reading Replay ages ago! I did think the HaBO might be a different one-shot manga/manhwa, but I haven’t found anything similar yet when searching.
Definitely not a romance, but from what I remember, the Troy Game books by Sara Douglass center around a group of characters that love/hate/kill each other and are reincarnated again and again.
Could it be Dreams by Jayne Ann Krentz? This was published by Harlequin as 2 separate books but they have been combined into 1 book for awhile. It is available as an ebook, Amazon has it for $4.99. I haven’t read it for a few years but I remember the couple keep dreaming about each other and one or other gets killed in past lives.
This isn’t the HaBO, but Every Time I love you by Heather Graham is a reincarnation themed book and one of my favorites, if this is your catnip. It has been years since I have read it so of course I had to put it on my want to reread shelf.
I don’t know if this is it, but “Through Caverns Infinite” by Becky Lee Weyrich, is a really good reincarnation book. It stuck with me for years.
“The miracle of hypnotherapy brought her back to the lives she had previously lived. Thrust by hypnotherapy into her former lives, Tonia Martinelli moved from past life into past life. In 1846 she was 12 year old Kathleen O’Brien on her way west with the ill-fated Donner party. Other lives were called forth by the strange Dr. Winkelbauer. Eventually she reached back 5,000 years to when the great pyramid was built, and she was Princess Ilca.”
This sort of sounds like the movie Dead Again, from back when Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh were married (1991, IMDb tells me). It stars them, Andy Garcia, and Derek Jacobi and involves amnesia, reincarnation, murder in the past life, scissors, etc. I remember really liking it – I should re-watch it soon.
This sounds a lot like Finding Laura by Kay Hooper. Daniel remembers every life with Laura. He has to find her in each life- she remembers nothing, but is drawn to him. They always end up meeting again through an antique hand mirror with a maze pattern on it. In their current life, Daniel’s brother is murdered, so there is extra drama. Laura is a painter, doing a portrait of Daniel’s grandmother.
I thought I saw a similar thread somewhere else and I will give this a shot..It sounds like it could possibly be Losing Me Finding You by Natalie Ward
My guess is “A Moment in Time” by Bertrice Small. Maybe?
This plot is used in a short story that was published in one of the Secrets compilations, and was titled….argh, can’t remember, but it was spicy for the time. It ended back at the Spanish Inquisition. If this sounds like it, I’ll try and find the title.
I don’t know if you read manga, but since you mentioned that this story could have been in another medium, I’m gonna give it a shot.
The description sounds exactly like the plot of Omae ga Sekai o Kowashitai nara (also known as Vampire Girl). The two characters are lovers who end up killing each other every time they are reincarnated. It is revealed in the very end that they actually existed within a child’s (unclear if he is a god of some sort) failed creation and the child finds the broken system to be so beautiful, he decides to keep it like that. I remember this story because I thought it was really messed up that these two are kept in their eternal misery on the whim of a child.
This hits me as pretty similar to Erotic Deja Vu by Katherine O’Neal, which is a novella originally pubbed in the Taken by Surprise anthology, but I think it’s been re-released in other formats. That novella also includes a definite Arabian Nights theme, in the sense that there’s a subplot where they’re taken captive and she has to tell ongoing stories to keep them from being killed.
Linda Howard’s Lake of Dreams is very similar, but not quite. They do keep meeting and falling in love, but what she thinks she remembers isn’t quite what was going on. Even if it’s not your HABO, it’s a great novella. I feel a reread coming on.
@Wiesteria I think that might be it!! I skipped to the last chapters to check and it is! Thank you so much! I couldn’t find it when I was looking through possible manga and webcomics, so I was convinced it was probably a book instead.
Thank you also to everyone else for their guesses, you guys are amazing! I’m pretty much adding all the suggestions to my TBR list so yay~