Midwinterblood

Have you ever had the feeling that you've lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar, even though you've never been there before, or felt that you know someone well, even though you are meeting them for the first time? It happens. In 2073 on the remote and secretive island of Blessed, where rumor has it that no one ages and no children are born, a visiting journalist, Eric Seven, and a young local woman known as Mere are ritually slain. Their deaths echo a moment ten centuries before, when, in the dark of the moon, a king was slain, tragically torn from his queen. Their souls search to be reunited, and as mother and son, artist and child, forbidden lovers, victims of a vampire they come close to finding what they've lost. In a novel comprising seven parts, each influenced by a moon - the flower moon, the harvest moon, the hunter's moon, the blood moon - this is the story of Eric and Merle whose souls have been searching for each other since their untimely parting.
from goodreads.com

Beth says 5 Stars...
It seems like the Printz committee this year was really into dark stories, and I'm totally okay with that when it comes in such a beautiful form. The story itself is packaged in a weird form; a series of vignettes about the interactions and love between various reincarnations of two characters throughout time. Even more interesting is that instead of starting at their first life, the novel begins with their last and moves backwards until finally giving the full story. Some readers might find it disconcerting, but I absolutely loved it. What's more, Sedgewick can write like nobody's business. The prose is totally transporting and an absolute pleasure to read. The whole book is dark, brooding, and atmospheric with minor details repeating themselves. What's also wonderful is how the stories themselves are so different, with the main characters veering from doomed lovers to siblings to once when they never even meet.

The characters are hard to dissect, because Merle and Eric (or some variant thereof) change from story to story. What I will say is that the love between the two of them is both constant and ever-changing like the characters themselves. There are also a ton of secondary characters, some of which also repeat in their own special ways throughout the book, although none with the same consistency of the main two.

I loved this book full stop. Although I know it's not going to be everyone's cup of (special island) tea, I would highly recommend giving it a try. After being a bit disappointed in Sedgewick's other novel, I am so glad I picked this one up. If you're looking for something dark, different, and brilliantly written get your hot little hands on this book as soon as you can.
book from library