Information:
- Author: Laura Steven
- Genre: Romance, Magical Realism
- Page Count: 352
- Year Published: 2025
Read This If You Like:
- Reincarnation Stories
- Star-Crossed Lovers
- YA books with covers that look like they belong to Adult books
- Dual timelines and alternate POVs (Many, many, Dual timelines and alternate POVs)
- Historical Fiction(ish)
- Books inspired by Taylor Swift songs
- Poetry mentions
- Queer Representation
- Experimentation with different settings
- People that people fall in love with but also end up killed by
- British-set novels and authors
Synopsis:
17 year old Bran has been hit by tragedy many times, and doesn't want it to happen again to her sister with cancer. But more importantly, Bran needs to make sure that she herself doesn't die- even though Bran is guaranteed to die. Because Bran is just another reincarnation of Evelyn, who has lived through thousands of timelines, settings, and events throughout history. She remembers almost every moment in each past life, as well as the key fact that ties them all together: before her 18th birthday, she is killed by Arden, the supernatural being who always reincarnates with her, ends up interacting with her, and dies with her the minute she dies. Now in the present day (well, 2022, so a few years back), Evelyn/Bran is really trying to survive past 18 and evade Arden, all so her sister can survive. But of course, it looks like there's a huge chance she'll fail. And there's yet another big issue- in every timeline, Arden is always reincarnated as Evelyn's lover, and every relationship has been doomed. And it's getting hard for Evelyn and Arden to avoid falling for each other- again.
Review/Opinions:
If I have any author to blame for my love of dark academia, it's Laura Steven. I absolutely loved her YA dark academia stories The Society for Soulless Girls.Every Exquisite Thing for their shocking, actually horror-filled twists and her somewhat flawed but really developed characters who managed to do anything for perfection while also falling into a pretty toxic but passionate romance along the way. So her newest novel Our Infinite Fates was one of my more anticipated releases, and I also appreciated that it was launched in the UK and the US at the same time (since I had a huge struggle finding the UK only Every Exquisite Thing and would really like a US edition soon, thank you very much). While I was overall excited to read it, I did think at first that it looked a little less appealing than her previous novels. Maybe it was the departure from her unique dark academia to a somewhat more generic star-crossed lovers and reincarnation plot. Maybe it was the generic title and boring US cover that looked more like it belonged to an Adult literary fiction story than a YA magical realism romance. Maybe it was because the author stated it was inspired by the song 'exile' by Taylor Swift (I don't know that song, I'm personally not a Swiftie, and I won't disrespect anyone if they identify as one, but Taylor Swift inspired novels are the biggest example of an overused cliche that should've never actually became a cliche.) But I read the novel, and I ended up enjoying it. Sure, it was definitely not as good as Steven's other books, but there was plenty of passionate romance, and it experimented with plotlines in some ways I never expected.
I've never really read any books where we have the 'star crossed lovers' trope. It's either because all of the ones I see look too uninteresting for me, or it's just one of the less common YA tropes. But even if I don’t have the greatest interest in the trope, I think the romance in this novel was nice overall. If you’re a fan of a little bit of angst and “I love him, but he will be my downfall” type stuff, this is a good pick for you. It’s obvious at first that Evelyn should try to avoid Arden to protect her own life- but it slowly becomes clear that she loves him. It does feel like at some points Arden starts to fall into the category where it seems like the author is trying too hard to make him the perfect book boyfriend since he’s a supernatural being who does romantic stuff like writing poetry, but the romance (if we removed the supernatural stuff) was pretty believable. I do think Arden had a bit more personality than Evelyn- she just felt like the one that was screwed and determined to save her own and her sister’s life, but she had a tiny bit of development as the romance escalated. And hey, based off the five lyrics I know from Taylor Swift, this novel fit the vibe pretty well (a statement that I find for my critique purposes to be both good and also detrimental.)
One thing that I didn’t expect this book to do was to play around with timelines and different stories. While the bulk of the novel takes place in the more modern day setting in Wales where Evelyn is dealing with her current Arden-related issues, there’s also an exploration of other historical settings- many other historical settings. These chapters in the past explore various years and settings in the past, and how Evelyn interacts with Arden in these settings. I can’t exactly comment on how accurate the depictions some of these settings are due to my limited knowledge, but it was cool to see the author try out different settings and circumstances. In addition, because Arden and Evelyn are constantly reincarnating, we get to also see them play different roles and genders, including queer relationships in settings where they were uncommon, which is nice to see. I will admit these chapters were quite formulaic, as they all followed the structure of showing a bit of the setting and who Evelyn has been reincarnated as in this timeline, before Arden shows up and death or some other incident happens for them. (Also, some of these deaths were… dark.) Since all the settings only had a chapter dedicated to each of them, I also wanted some expansion on a few of them, but overall I don’t think that was really required. I have the feeling some readers may think that the extra settings just slow down the novel and add too much extra content, but I really liked them for giving the book a bit of an experimental feel. Plus, the novel’s pacing in the modern day setting was good overall- nothing amazing, but not too fast or slow.
The one major issue I had with this novel was the big twist and the climax. Listen, we all hate spending a bunch of time on a book only for a lame twist that you could’ve guessed in seconds. But there’s a difference between a twist that is shocking but believable considering the rest of the story, and a shocking twist that is awful because the reason you couldn’t guess it is because it’s the most far-fetched twist that just doesn’t fit with the rest of the plot. And unfortunately, the big twist in this novel falls into the second category in the worst way possible. I really hate being vague about it, but I’m really trying to not spoil everything for you, but know that the twist just made no sense it the context of the novel. And I would forgive it if the story gave some decent explanation for why the twist didn’t come up later in the novel, but nope, it gives the most basic, flimsy reasoning possible. (I will admit that this led to the singular best line in the entire book.) In addition, the twist led to a full fantasy angle for the climax that didn’t fit the more magical realism vibe we got for the rest of the book. It did add to those experimental vibes, but I feel like it would’ve been really easy for the author to fix the ending (especially because the other books I read from her had great endings that made sense): all that the story needed was better explanation for why the twist was a twist, or just a twist that fit with the rest of the story.
But other than the ending, I think this was a good book overall, even for someone who doesn’t really read these kind of star-crossed lover novels or magical realism stories. While overall I recommend Steven’s dark academia stories more than this novel, I think it’s a nice story if you like supernatural stories, passionate romances that defy logic, and experimentation with different types of settings and timelines. And hey, maybe the inspiration for this novel will make it a good gift for the Swiftie reader in your life (but please, don’t read this book just because of Taylor Swift. Please.)