Lost Soul (War of Destiny Series Book 1) by Theresa Van Spankeren – Review by Ayla Phipps

Lost Soul by Theresa Van Spankeren
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Heavy emotional rollercoaster. While I have seen Theresa’s books over time while working at a library, I hadn’t previously given them a read until now. One of my new years resolutions was to read books by as many new authors as I could, and this series always looked interesting. I must say I was not prepared for the deep emotions that I would be taken for a ride with, but the book had me holding my breath from start to finish praying Julia could get a win.
Julia is in modern day London but as she writes her biography, we are taken on the journey of who Julia is and how she came to this point. She is over half a century old, and a combination of things has her getting flashbacks to her past life, her human life. The only way to be rid of the flashbacks is to confront them and discover what the importance is in them. 1492, Julia was born and while her childhood was mostly wonderful considering nothing prepared her for what was to come after overhearing her father and brother speaking when she was eleven. At fifteen she was to marry Gregory Smith, a man wealthier than her own father had asked for her hand and while it was not the man, she wanted to marry her father accepted for her and that was final. All Julia ever wanted was to have the power to make her own decisions about her own life. To have control. Immediately her younger sister informs her of the uneasy feelings she gets around Gregory and the urge to flee from the room he enters, but it’s too late she has no choice but to marry him. Crystal, her sister, warns her to be careful. What follows the marriage and in the first two years is heartbreaking, not only what Julia experiences at the hands of her husband but of her own father.
Will Julia find an escape? Can she have a happy moment that’s not tainted with painful consequences? The world the author builds is based off history, the times in which the story takes place are accurate which makes reading it so much more painful as some today still deal with similar situations. The characters have immense strength and fight to overcome all that they are faced with. Finding one thing to fight for to keep her going. I have found a new author and series to follow and now off to book two, Pursuit into Darkness to see what happens next for Julia.

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