review by showhost
(832 pages first published in 1986 - her first book)
1980's Jo Clifford is a journalist. she is writing an article for a
magazine about peoples belief in a past life. Jo is a complete non-believer and
is out to prove it is all nonsense.
she is invited to sit in on a couple of hypnotic sessions, with the
patients consent, and both with different hypnotists. The first one doesn't
alter her opinion. The second sessions patient cancels so Jo offers to be
regressed/hypnotised as long as she can (tape)record the session for her notes.
Jo proves to be very susceptible and regresses to the time of King Henry 11
and King john. she is Matilda De Braose, Lady of Hay, she is married to brutal
William and it is the 12th century. She is in love with Richard De Clare but
the young (yet to be King) John is in love with her although he is yet a
child/youth. As he gets older his desire for her increases and as she spurns
his affections his anger mounts and he is going to make her & her children
suffer.
Jo becomes addicted to regression as she wants to find out what happens to
herself as Matilda & her family - she suffers the pain of watching the
slaughter of the Welsh prince and his family at the hands of her husband and her
own eventual slow death. she wakes as Jo with cut and bruised hands from having
scratched the castle walls when in regression. She hears the cries of a baby
her baby from the past as do her present day neighbours.
Her regressions start to affect her present day relationships, her fated
love for Nick and his brother Sam, himself a hypnotherapist. But it isn't just
Jo who has regressed into that time and took on the life of another, those
close around her also regress as they carry on the fight for the love of Lady
Matilda Some are out to make her pay for her infidelities and others to atone
for the wrong they caused her.
It is an addictive book and a historical love story. The past is
atmospherically re-created and I preferred that to the present day. This is the
first of this authors I have read. I would probably try another sometime but
not yet. also wondered Is this where Kate
Mosse got her ideas for her books?
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