THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF TOMORROW

She’s been alive for 616 years, but now she’s in love with a teenage boy.

This second installation in the Incarnation series leads to a showdown between the lead character and her nemesis but leaves the way open for another sequel. Evil Cyrus has the formula that allows souls to incarnate in new bodies, once the bodies are sufficiently dead. Cyrus clings to his obsessive love for Sera, whom he turned immortal in 1349, but she escaped in the previous book by finding a girl dying in a car accident and taking over her body. Living as 16-year old Kailey, Sera’s now happily ensconced in Berkeley with the girl’s former family, who don’t know their daughter is dead. She’s also firmly in love with Kailey’s boyfriend, Noah. She wants to escape Cyrus and live as Kailey with her new romance intact, but to do it, she will have to outwit Cyrus. Can Sera/Kailey find Cyrus before he finds her, even as he uses his coven of fellow Incarnates to search for her? Chick-lit action full of fashion, friendships and girl rivalries vies with the immortality plot, which includes Sera’s hand-wringing about the ethics of the practice she and the other Incarnates have been following for centuries. Volcano metaphors occasionally stand out in the otherwise straightforward prose.

Fine for devoted paranormal-romance fans but probably not many others.