On the Other Side

On The Other Side would be best described as a magical realism book, I like this kind of books they are always so interesting to me just because it could be real, and we all like to think things are real.

We are thrust into the world of Evie Snow and her life we first see her as 27-year-old woman in an elevator going to her apartment only the door won’t open. This is where she learns and remembers that she dies and to get into her apartment which is her own heaven she must unburden herself and be light enough before she can pass through to her heaven. We soon discover that she has 3 secrets to unburden herself with and each of these secrets she has to go back to the main world and reveal them to the people she kept them from and give them little clues.

The book is set into different parts ranging from the past to present as well as in parts of her secrets and the front part of the book was based off Evie and Vincent’s relationship this had to happen so we could get substance for the rest of the book as most of her secrets reveal to be related to Vincent and what they shared for a year. She splits her secrets into seeing the people she loves.

She visit’s her son August for her first secret which was called The Black Bird this is referred to a bird that she used to write love notes on to Vincent and the bird stayed with them. She visits him and asks her son to release the bird of its duty and set it free. He does this and decides to keep the love notes that the bird had and make a little book with them in.
She then visits her daughter and tells her to go back to her apartment to get an old shoe box that had secrets in about her being an artist, and that is the part she kept from her daughter who was also an artist.
She then visits Vincent and tells him to go to a tree in her garden and to try some of the fruit that it has.
These just show what some people do take to the grave to them and the secrets they keep whether itself preservation or to protect someone eventually they have to deal with the secrets. It was so interesting reading this story in the different parts and going back and forward. It also showed death and heaven in a different way, that we do have to deal with things before we move onto the afterlife and we have our own personal heaven.

Evie, I loved her character she was very quirky and happy, she always tried to look on the bright side especially when it came to her job and how the people at work treated her and they disrespected her. We see a completely different personality from what her mother would prefer her to be and tries to force her to be, she is kind and yet she doesn’t want anything to do with love, that is until she meets Vincent. For the love of her brother though she agrees to marry Jim like their parents want to.

Vincent is a musician and is busking at the train station when we first meet him. I was updating my progress on goodreads and when they first spoke after swapping sweets and messages, I was like oh my god this is perfect and so cute. He is so cute when he is with Evie and the way he treats her it’s so perfect and the fact he puts up with his friend Sonny even if he doesn’t like him at most of the time.

Little One… Is a bird… But it plays a massive part in this story by sending love notes between her and Vincent and it’s so cute this bird has a lot of personality for a bird. It’s a loyal bird too, I feel like that was a little fairyland but I suppose for a book that is magical realism that is okay.

Jim is her best friend who their parents are forced to marry, and he tries to keep Evie and Vincent together even if it meant marrying someone he really didn’t want to. Together though they help her brother Eddie which is one reason why Evie finally agrees to marry, and we see although she didn’t love him they had a long and happy life with their children and they made sure their upbringing didn’t affect their children and they were raised by who they wanted to be.

Eddie, we don’t see much of during this book but we do hear about him quite a bit and then he becomes a big part of the book nearing the end of Evie’s promised year away to try and become an artist. The day before her year is over her brother sneaks out to see her and breaks down admitting to her he is gay which she already knew. I think their relationship is one that most people want the fact they can be there for each other and Evie can sacrifice the love of her life to make sure her brother is happy.

Evie’s mother Eleanor was horrid. She is the most awful person in the book her views on what woman should be and that they are just there to make the house good and be a mother and a wife. Very old view.

This brings me to the one small problem with this book, well not small, big. Carrie said she didn’t set a date for this book because she wanted to make it timeless, this has a really big impact on the book. She may not have chosen an era or date to set it in but you can tell, you can tell where it is, well we can narrow it down we don’t know for sure. By the way they speak, the views that are possessed by men about women this is shown by her mother and her co-workers who just sexually harass her and just basically look at her like a pair of boobs. I would have preferred there to be a date applied to this story it just seemed like someone couldn’t be bothered to research the proper time era. Which is a disappointment but from the attitudes in this book we can tell the time period.

This story is also great and showing a first love and the impact that has on a person especially if like most people they don’t end up together and it ends badly or they don’t end up together. This had a very big impact on Evie and in the end, she buries it all her life until her death where she has to reveal the secrets to be able to pass through to heaven. It’s a very sweet story, and the ending was so good, I’m not going to tell though because you can all wait and read it yourself.