REGRESSION

Reviewed by Romuald Dzemo for Readers' Favorite

Regression by Sergiu Urma is an unusual romance with strong spiritual and paranormal themes. Seventy-year-old Alexis Grivas is a retired Greek American broker living in New York. When he discovers the photo of a thirty-four-year-old woman called Sofia on social media, it reminds him of someone he has known before, but he can’t recall when and where. She is a teacher in a school in Chișinău, in Moldova. Alexis feels irresistibly drawn to this woman and as he falls in love with her, he goes on a journey through hypnotic regression, traveling through different lifetimes and reincarnations to discover who she is. Follow him through nine of his previous lives. He has been many things, including an apothecary in Elizabethan London, a woman in the nineteenth-century Wild West, a deacon in a local church in Moldova, and different persons through the ages. In this hypnotic journey, he will uncover why he struggles with the guilt of having killed a woman and why he is irresistibly attracted to Sofia.

There is so much in this book — history, religion, romance that endures for centuries, slavery and barbarism, murder and mystery, and a lot more. The author does an impeccable job of writing vivid scenes filled with historical elements. The protagonist has been many things through different reincarnations, like a journalist in the time of the French Revolution and a clairvoyant in the medieval era. The writing is detailed, and there are gripping moments of romance and violence that will appeal to readers. It is interesting to read about a love so strong that it remains steadfast through the changing landscapes, historical moments, and cultures. The characters are exceptionally written and the author’s sense of setting is equal to none. The first-person narrative voice is so expertly written that it allows the emotions of the protagonist and the plot to flow beautifully. Sergiu Urma’s novel grips the reader from the first page and keeps them reading until the last. Regression is a story with a powerful premise, a sophisticated plot, and an utterly satisfying denouement.