Having recently updated my past book selections I noticed that I had not reviewed “Return to Your Skin” by Luz Gabás, I am happy to have had the chance for the previous e-book; thank you NetGalley and Amazon Crossing!

The synopsis of this story grabbed me right away and the details throughout kept me entertained. As I am very interested in discovering the history of my own ancestors, I found this book fascinating. The past stories revealed as Brianda and Corso discovered the archives were what this Ancestry.com fan can only imagine in my own family discoveries.

An unusual read that blends past and present. Brenda thought she would find her past when she left Madrid for the Pyrenees but there was much more waiting for her. For fans of world literature.

This is in no ways a book for everyone, even those that think it sounds utterly fascinating. The slow build up and start of this book, the slightly strange plot and writing style... it all works in a way against the book. But if you are able to work through that and overlook or appreciate its strangeness for what it is, you will be rewarded with a very interesting and different tale that i found utterly spell binding!
I would recommend giving the first handful of pages a try. If its something you believe you are able to read half of it in that style without problem -get it! If you believe you might struggle... you have to deice for yourself what kind of reader you are.

"Past and present are interwoven in this story of everlasting love, where the shadow of witchcraft and man’s greed are defeated by one woman’s passion that transcends space and time.

Brianda, a young engineer, leaves her comfortable life in Madrid to learn more about her ancestors. When she travels to a cold, isolated village high in the Pyrenees to explore her roots, Brianda discovers a family secret—and a new love interest. The mysterious Corso, who is challenging destiny by restoring the neglected manor he has inherited, offers to help Brianda in her research. Together they uncover another woman named Brianda in the family archives, a woman who lived four centuries ago.

Heiress to the distinguished lord of Orrun, Brianda of Lubich defied convention by refusing to marry and carry on the family lineage. In a land convulsed by wars, twenty-four women were accused in one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of Spanish witchcraft. Due to her unconventional ways, Brianda became a target. She makes a promise to her true love, a promise she may not live to keep."

A shadow of witchcraft and I'm sold.

I honestly could tell by the writing of the first 2 chapters that it wouldn't be a good fit for our box and had to put it down. I may read it again in the future!

Most time-slip novels in the traditional mold are set in countries with a lengthy and well-documented history. Think Anya Seton’s Green Darkness, Barbara Erskine’s Lady of Hay, and, more recently, Nicola Cornick’s House of Shadows, all with British settings.

Thanks to AmazonCrossing and the fluid translation of Noel Hughes, English-speaking readers have the opportunity to read one set in the less-common location of Spain: Return to Your Skin by Luz Gabás, which—as one can guess from the title—involves a reincarnation theme.

The modern story follows Brianda, an engineer in her late thirties, who leaves Madrid to stay with relatives in the remote mountain village of Tiles after suffering unexplained anxiety and a dream involving a dark-haired woman, a rain-soaked night, and an encounter with a mysterious man along a treacherously narrow aqueduct. Brianda has always had a great relationship with her live-in boyfriend, Esteban, but when her visions start invading their sex life, as shown in a disturbingly effective scene, she withdraws from him emotionally.

In Tiles, her aunt Isolina welcomes her warmly to Anels House, although her uncle Colau is as gruff as she remembers and seems consumed by a mysterious anger. Enigmatic Colau, whose family is rumored to be cursed, seems destined to be a typical villain but turns out to have perhaps the most intriguing psychological profile among all the characters. Colau is also a longtime researcher of local history, but what Brianda turns up doesn’t please him. And then she meets an Italian man named Corso who’s restoring his family’s manor, Lubich, across the woods from Anels, and to whom she feels an uncanny attraction.

About a third of the way in, the viewpoint switches to the heroine’s earlier counterpart, Brianda of Lubich. The political situation in late 16th-century Aragon, which grows progressively more hostile, takes a while to untangle due to the many individuals and factions involved. It’s a complex portrait of a dark, painful epoch, particularly for women—and one aspect of the plot, as Gabás explains in an afterword, is drawn from actual history.

Classic time-slip elements are introduced one by one: a churchyard with secrets, revelatory documents and other artifacts, and a secret passion that’s hard to deny. When romantic lightning strikes, though, what happens to the couple’s existing partners: are these situations addressed head on, or are the problems brushed aside? The answer is “some of both,” and in one case, disappointingly, it isn’t handled at all. Also, oddly, the modern characters appear not to have surnames.

The novel, moving slowly at first, gains significant power in the last half as the stakes grow higher, and accusations of witchcraft begin to fly. Its strength lies in its portrait of an era and its tragic aftermath, and the pressure this bears on subsequent generations.

(First published at Reading the Past)

After the wonderful Palm Trees in the Snow, I found this latest novel from Luz Gabas a real let-down. It had none of the originality and narrative power of Palm Trees, and the characterisation, nuanced and thoughtful in the earlier book, is missing here. It’s an historical romance, a love story with witchcraft, with past and present mingling in a melodramatic fashion with a love affair between a young woman and a brooding dark stranger. Much heightened emotions and turmoil, stereotypical characters and unauthentic dialogue. Ultimately I had to give up with it, as not only did I found the writing flat but I was bored almost from the start. Disappointing.

DNF @ 27%

Nothing in the world will make it okay for our leading lady to make out with mystery man only a couple kilometres from where her husband is catching up on work (because he spent time with her he didn't have). Just no.
This reads a bit like Outlander (but nowhere near as good) in that there is trashy romantic moments, next to historical lore, next to literary devices. And while the writing is good enough; it feels a little like Lux Gabas wanted to span too many genres and be serious yet a romance novel at the same time. While it can be done, it's tough and Return to your Skin doesn't seem to achieve it.

I was relatively bored from the get-go. Even the Wiccan ritual was described in a boring and unmoving way. How can you not make witchcraft/magic boring?!
However, the facts of Wicca I read are correct and laid out in an acceptable manner. For many people (myself included) Wicca (a branch of Paganism) is not a mystery but our actual religion. Through Wicca I found my link to deities an the earth.
It's possible that this will happen for our lead lady. That seems to be what is being foreshadowed. And yet I still couldn't care.
Incredibly dull and not worth picking up for any reason I can think of.

*Giving this book 3.5 stars, not 3*
The first thing that drew me to this book was the cover of it. I know, I know, "Don't judge a book by its cover." but in this case, I definitely think it was worth it. This novel was very good and I am glad that I was able to pick it up. Brianda struggles with a lot during this novel, learning that a new friend isn't quite who she seems, many deaths, relationship strains, and many other things that aren't as normal (like remembering things from a distant past.)

Brianda has real traits, she was definitely not a Mary Sue in my eyes. She had real worries and went through a lot of tribulations. I felt that she was very grounded and was a well rounded character, someone that the reader could connect to.

The reason why I gave this book 3.5 stars was because I felt that the middle, when we learn of Brianda of the past, was dragging on. I understand that we needed to know about what happened so that we could get back to the Brianda of the present, but it felt like too much was going on. I didn't enjoy it because there were too many people coming into the novel so quickly. I had already learned the character's names from the Brianda of the present, so having to learn around ten new names and jumping into a new story that was in media res was something I wasn't expecting.

Once I got through the first time that the author did this, it became easy to understand the chapters from the past and the characters in them. As I came closer and closer to the end of the novel I found myself trying to read faster because I wanted to know how it ended. I needed to know how it ended. 
This book holds a wonderful and dark world about the past of distant villages and towns that history does not pay attention to anymore.

There is something about reincarnations that appeals to me. It is more like history in the present driving the future, but I am more drawn to it when it involves injustice and more so a promise, which is evident in this book.
Brianda, an Engineer, is well settled with her boyfriend Esteban, a lawyer, and she's got a big contract coming up. Things seem great on the outside but inside there is a whole battle raging on. She sees a different world and when these sightings manifest in her day to day activities she is forced to take time off work and go to Tiles to visit her aunt Isolina. It is her visit that builds up on her dreams and with time she learns that there is more to her name, being and family history.

I loved the description of the scenes and it gave me a magical insight into a place I'd love to visit.
The pace was great, for the historical events make up the bulk of the middle of the story. What intrigued me was that eighty percent of the story was told from Brianda's point of view and the one chapter that told of Corso's anguish moved me more than I expected. It was more like saving the best for last, but in a good way.

I will read this book again because it draws me in and guess that requesting to read it off NetGalley was a good move.

Return to your Skin is a fantastic historical romance set in the past and in modern times, weaving them together to tell a wonderful yet hard story. Past lives and eternal paroises are fulfilled in the lives of Brianda and Corso in the village of Tiles, Spain. Brianda, a successful engineer, begins to experience a terrifying nightmare in which she is the focus of horrifying terror in the past. She suffers progressively worse anxiety until it disrupts her work and life. In an attempt to get away and perhaps find relief, she travels to Tiles to her aunt and uncle’s home. Her Uncle Colau has frightened her since childhood and that has not changed. In Tiles, she meets Neli, a Wiccan practice, and Corso, an intriguing stranger who is rebuilding his ancestor’s home/fortress.
Brianda is desperate to discover the cause of her anxiety and of the nightmares. She begins the arduous task of pulling together the history of one Brianda of Anels-her relative, of a territory-wide war, and of her strange and compulsive desire for Corso.
I found myself immersed not only in the past lives of Brianda and Corso and their romance but also in the richly described history of the land in which they lived. Luz Gabas has definitely excellently researched the times, the dress, the customs, and the atmosphere of Spain in the 1500’s, the frenzy that surrounded the Inquisition and its influence on all of Spain, and the landscape and buildings of that period of history.
It is a not to miss book!

I received a free copy of the English translation by Noel Hughes from netgalley. This book was slow to grab me, but by the end I was gripped. This is a tragic story of a Spanish mountain town that is suffering and changing in the 1500s and the cruel things we humans do to each other under difficult circumstances. But it is also an optimistic love story. It was unlike anything else I have read, and I would certainly recommend it