BOOK REVIEW || On The Other Side by Carrie Hope Fletcher

*** please note, this review may contain spoilers***

Summed up in a sentence? " A heartwarming tale of love, friendship and secrecy" 

SYNOPSIS

Your soul is too heavy to pass through this door, Leave the weight of the world in the world from before.

Evie Snow is eighty-two when she quietly passes away in her sleep, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. It's the way most people wish to leave the world but when Evie reaches the door of her own private heaven, she finds that she's become her twenty-seven-year-old self and the door won't open.

Evie's soul must be light enough to pass through so she needs to get rid of whatever is making her soul heavy. For Evie, this means unburdening herself of the three secrets that have weighed her down for over fifty years, so she must find a way to reveal them before it's too late.

As Evie begins the journey of a lifetime, she learns more about life and love than she ever thought possible, and somehow, some way, she may also find her way back to the only man she ever truly loved ...

MY OPINIONS

After following Carrie's YouTube, Twitter and Instagram feeds for some time, I knew I wanted to read her first fiction novel. She's previously published a non-fiction work called All I Know Now, which was almost auto-biographical in providing advice for teens growing up. When she released the news that she was going to be releasing fiction novels, I knew I needed to get in on that. And I am so pleased I did.

Evie is such a loveable character, who we find at the beginning of the novel struggling to understand why she, a dead woman, cannot get into her 27 year old self's apartment. We learn at this point that she has a couple of things weighing her down, which are preventing her getting to her 'happy place', or her heaven, which is behind the door of her old flat.

Carrie has managed to create a story that warms the heart, and makes you wish you could just squeeze her characters until everything is better for them. I followed Evie as she relived her youth, and went through each of the three secrets to try and reveal them before it was too late. I laughed with her, cried with her and most of all, felt relieved when things went her way.

MY RATING

Overall, I am rating this book 4.5 out of five stars. I absolutely adored this book, and cannot wait to get my hands on her second novel! Definitely a must-read for fans of YA romance, or possibly even contemporary fans!