Quick reaction: Simply amazing. Breathtaking.

**STARRED REVIEW**

Actual, full review: Original is here. (Note: Due to copy-and-paste, formatting and links have been lost.)

If I lived a thousand lifetimes, I would've read this book every time and loved it still.

Incarnate is just beautiful. It's... goodness, I don't want to ramble and gush at all, but it seems like that might actually happen. I love this book too much.

Let's start with Ana. Ana is cynical and unhappy and a nosoul. She believes all the terrible things her mother, Li, called her and told her all eighteen years of her life. As a result, she can't bare to believe that there might be more to life than living in servitude, that maybe she could fall in love and have that love requited, too. She questions things--so refreshing to have a girl's first instinct to be running away when waking up in the tent of a stranger boy--as she should, but even more so than the average person. While that might aggravate some readers, I thought it was wonderful. It was exactly what I'd expect Ana to be like after all that she's been through, and I loved her. She was real.

Sam. My gosh, I have a serious fetish for literary guy musicians named Sam. They make me smile like an idiot and bawl like the world's worst romantic. Sam is amazing. He's so patient--which I was so, so happy about, because that's exactly the type of boy Ana needs. He loves music and Ana. The masquerade scene, though, that was my favorite. It made me feel like I had wings and could fly around in my giddiness, and as long as Sam and Ana were together in their beautifully awkward, wonderfully simple way, I would never fall.

There's also the music and the premise. I think the spectacularly brilliant musical incorporation in this book is what completely sold me. I love music with all of my heart. I can live forever with only books and music, and to have both in one is like finding snow-capped mountains, shimmering rivers like satin, and blinding rays of sunshine encapsulate you forever and ever. And the premise was great--thought-provoking and incredibly awesome and definitely creates some intense and funnily awkward situations. To be the only new incarnation in a world of reincarnated people who get to keep all of their past lives' memories? Fantastic. I'm beyond excited and interested in seeing where Jodi will take us next.

I don't know how to end this review and do this book justice. But perhaps, perhaps this will work, if only halfway. While I was reading Incarnate, I was listening to Lindsey Stirling's Lord of the Rings medley, and that just flared the pages and completely enchanted me.

Here's the video.

Isn't it just beautiful?