Something To Believe In - My review of The Five People You Meet In Heaven

As I talk about books a lot, I'm lucky to have a few friends and family who will listen to me and will also give their own suggestions for books that they think I should try. One of those friends (the same one who recommended Who Moved My Cheese?) recommended that I try The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom as she had read it and had really enjoyed it. I was planning on concentrating on my challenge reads, but the premise behind this book had me intrigued and so I read it straight away.

The book starts out by giving a brief history of the main character in the story, Eddie, with a mixture of flash backs and narrative and then this leads the reader to his death. His death though sad and quite unnecessary (unnecessary in the fact his death is a sad accident, his death itself is absolutely necessary to the story) is just part of the process in the story and though you feel sadness at the end of his life, it doesn't hit you as would a normal death in a story as you know this is coming.

Once Eddie dies, he then begins meeting the five people mentioned in the title. Some are people he knew and some are people that affected or were affected by Eddie's life. Each one has a lesson to teach Eddie to show that his life had meaning and that everyone is connected in one way or another.

There were some tear jerking moments which I did not fall prey to as I had already seen where Albom was heading with the people he was introducing. This is not a bad thing as I felt the five people were perfectly relevant for the story. I will own to coming close at one point but I had to put the book down to go and get my little boy up from his nap, so this broke the momentum and build up of the story and when I came back to reading it, that emotion had passed.

Mitch Albom's idea of heaven is that you meet five people important to tell your life story and teach you lessons of how important you actually were. You will then go on to take your place as one of someone else's five people. This is a very nice way to look at life after death as it gives a purpose and a new beginning rather than just an end, I'm not fully sure what I believe in, but this wouldn't be a bad thing to believe in if you so chose.

The book was a very easy and quick read and I would recommend it to other people. I would say that at times it feels more like a self help book than a novel, but as long as you take out of the story whatever you feel, it doesn't matter one way or another.

I started reading this book on the 18th of January 2015 and finished reading it on the 23rd of January 2015.
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads