This had such interesting characters and such sad undertones to the story. It was creatively written and you could see how well planned out this novel was..

I got about 1/4 of the way through the book, and I had to stop reading. I found it to be too tedious. It definitely is not my cup of tea. It's an interesting concept that's poorly carried out. So far, the writer tells stories about different people dying. I kept waiting for it to get better, but it never did.

A very emotional roller coaster of a book! I went in expecting this to be a horror or supernatural book and I'm glad I didn't read any other reviews or the description because it blew me away. It is so much more. Emotional. Funny. Sad. Poignant. I found myself smiling as I finished it, knowing I'd just read something important.

At first glance, Second Lives may be considered a horror story but it is so much more. Four people from differing walks of life die. Yet, they are somehow miraculously brought back from the brink of death, long after such a thing should have been possible. Are they really though, as each person claiming to be someone else, with no memory of the person whose body they now inhabit? The more you read, the story transmutes into one of kindness, compassion, and understanding.

The story begins in the past, following four people's lives...and deaths: Elisabeth Wyman, died in 1914 attending a woman's suffragette protest, Timothy O'Neal, in a hit and run accident in 1956, Aryeh Rosenberg, murdered in his watch shop in 1922, and Christine Moore, accidentally falling off her high school balcony in 1992. Then we jump to August 24th. These travelers, as they will be later deemed, wake in new bodies: Elisabeth in the body of Sara Cortland, comatose and pregnant but kept alive until her baby reaches term; Timothy in the body of Henry Rollins, a dementia patient whose body is failing him; Aryeh in the body of James Cooper, a paraplegic gay man who decides he can no longer deal with the demands of life and commits suicide; and Helen Harmon, who chose cardiac surgery so that she can get on with her life. While at first, it was challenging to follow so many different characters and timelines, they eventually blend.

I was completely unprepared for the intensity of Second Lives. Reincarnation certainly isn't a new concept in literature, but Second Lives is unique. These people's lives ended and they immediately stepped into the modern world, in bodies that don't belong to them, waking to relationships and families that have already been established. We aren't talking being reborn as a baby to live a shiny new life full of possibilities. We are talking about shutting one door and immediately opening another. Not only do the travelers have to cope with waking someone else, in another time, but those who lost a loved one have to deal with grief, skepticism, and finally acceptance. How they each choose to do so varies in emotion and strength.

I was most touched by Henry's story, both before his death and after Timmy's subsequent rebirth. Second Lives turned out to be a very engaging read and one that surprisingly tugged a bit on the ol' heartstrings. While not solidly horror, it has aspects that science fiction and contemporary fantasy readers would enjoy. P.D. Cacek is definitely an author that I will pick up again!

A quick look at Ms Cacek's latest book could possibly deem it a horror story. It deals with possession by the essence of a person now dead of the body of another person in the process of passing away. Certainly one of the major themes of literature devoted to horror stories. This is very far from the reality of what is a fascinating book actually devoted to a brilliant treatment of human nature under great stress.
The beginning section covers the deaths of four people of different ages and in different years. There is a potential suffragette attending a meeting in the early part of the twentieth century and killed by a man completely opposed to the concept of women's rights. Another is a little boy, with another a 16 year old girl. The final individual is a man dying from the effects of dementia.
The next phase of the novel involves those individuals in the process of dying that are possessed by the spirits of the first four. A doctor views the people being "resurrected" by the new life process coincidentally in the same hospital and about the same time. He indicates to the families of those expected to pass away that this situation has occurred before although not very a very common one. It is in this stage of the book that Ms Cacek turns an interesting novel into one that becomes a fascinating study of human nature. First, how do the previously dead persons react to finding themselves not only alive again, but in a different body than they had. Also, the reactions of the families of those expected to die when finding that their loved one is recovering, but is not the same person that had been brought to the hospital with the expectation of imminent death. And if their relationship is still the same or if previously families, if found have those rights.
The author has successfully written a powerful study of what could happen to all concerned if the postulated situation could ever happen. Human nature is of course, based on normal progression and ending of life at a certain point with no further contact with the decadent. There is no speculation of what happens normally after death as this is not germane to the described events. Very well done.

Second Lives
by P.D. Cacek
Flametree Press
due 4-11-2019
4.9 / 5.0

The families and close friends of 4 people think they have witnessed a ¨miracle¨ when their loved ones, who have been been declared dead, regain consciousness. They begin to breathe, see, hear and talk. However, the ¨miracles¨ prove less than miraculous when the families realize their loved one, now alive, does not recognize them, or their past. They do not even respond to their own names. After examining who they claim to be, these 4 patients are now possessed with the souls of people who have been dead many years. The hospital psychiatrist claims it as proof of the ¨transmigration of the soul¨ and urges the families to accept and help these displaced souls and help them get use to the new world they have been placed in.
Fresh and creative, this is an extraordinarily exciting and compelling story of second chances. The characters are cleverly developed, each dealing with the transmigration in their own way. How the families accept it is powerful and realistic. Intelligent, powerful and a great study of character.

Fantastic and original, character driven and exciting, this is compelling from start to finish. Looking forward to more from Cacek!
Thank you to FlameTree Press, NetGalley and P.D. Cacek for this e-book ARC for a fair and honest review.
#SecondLives
#netgalley

I loved the sound of this book, but sadly it just didn't live up to expectations ,I just didn't connect to the characters and was underwhelmed.I really don't like giving bad reviews and I see that other readers enjoyed the book,so I hope it is just me and the book appeals to other readers more.Thanks to netgalley and the publishers for an ARC.

I wanted to like this book, because I thought the premise had promise. The first third or more of the book is backstory on the 'travelers' who come to inhabit the bodies of four people who die in a hospital on the same day. Parts of the book were good. The acceptance of two of the 'travelers' by their hosts' families was good. Past that, the book really seemed to go nowhere. No explanation for the travelers, I was disappointed.

Lou Jacobs's Reviews > Second Lives

Second Lives by P.D. Cacek
Second Lives
by P.D. Cacek
M 50x66
Lou Jacobs's review Feb 11, 2019 · edit
it was amazing

Dying is easy .... the hard part is the situation for those left behind! This forms the crux of this wonderful novel. In this case, however, not only dealing with the grief and loss of your loved one... but, trying to deal with the inexplicable presence of another soul in their body.
It's been a long time since I've read a fantasy that is so poignant . The reader experiences a wide range of emotions ... pitty, sadness, joy, heart-warming and rending, tearfulness, and lastly wonder.
The major premise deals with the possibility of transmigration of souls ... certainly a viable consideration if you are a Kabbalistic scholar or a believer in reincarnation. This is not only a story of "The Fab Four" but also of their patients and families and loved ones. Psychiatrist, Dr Bernard Ellison gathers the four doctors in a conference room to hopefully shed light on these bizarre events. On August 24th four patients died within hours of each other... and then spontaneously revived with a new personna and past history. The patients: Sara Cortland... comatose and pregnant mother kept on life support for months until her baby could be delivered; Henry Rollins ... end-stage dementia with escalating episodes of aspiration pneumonia; James Cooper ... paraplegic who can no longer cope with his life and wheelchair, commits suicide by drowning; and lastly Helen Harmon .. 42 year old who wants a definitive fix for her cardiac condition, but dies on the operating table. And most important are "The Travelers" who awake in a different body and time. Cacek proves to be a marvelous storyteller and unravels this multifaceted tale... sparing no swings in the reader's emotions. Elisabeth Regina Wyman ... killed in 1914 at a women's suffrigete riot in London, awakens in Sara's body after life support is discontinued; Timothy Patrick O'Neal .. who died as a hit-and-run accident a few days shy of his sixth birthday in 1956 ... awakens in the dementia patient, Henry; Aryeh Rosenberg ... a Jewish watchmaker murdered in his shop in 1926, New York City... awakens in the paraplegic body of a gay man; and lastly: Christine Taylor Moore ... who died at 16 of a broken neck while accidentally falling off a balcony in her high school in 1992, awakens in the post-op body of Helen
Dr Stanton, the cardiac surgeon comes to The Fab Four meeting with a flash drive containing his research into the past history of all the Travelers. This is spurned onward by his fortuitous situation in which he actually knew Christine in high school ... and her apparent ravings about being someone other than Helen ring true. He doesn't believe that all four patients are experiencing a fugue state.
Thanks so much to Netgalley and Flame Tree Press for providing an Uncorrected Proof of this wonderful story in exchange for an honest review. Although I've never read P.D. Cacek before, this will certainly be remedied now.

P. D. Cacek rocks! SECOND LIVES is an extraordinarily compelling novel which I classify as horror, science fiction, and literary fiction. The premise seems simple enough on the surface: three patients in one hospital in California die on the same date--August 24. That's not odd. In a large hospital, that fact might be fairly common. A fourth man dies after a swimming pool drowning. However, what is odd, even impossible, is that all four patients revive: suddenly, after being declared clinically dead. All four are at first diagnosed with retrograde amnesia: they have no memory, of course, of dying, nor even of their previous lives. The attending psychiatrist believes this may be a temporary condition, but it's not: apparently all four of those individuals are gone, permanently. The "occupants" of these four formerly dead, now living bodies are others. The psychiatrist, baffled and befuddled, eventually comes to accept their nature, and terms them "travelers." Apparently, there have been some other instances. All four individuals themselves previously died (two deaths due to violent confrontation, two due to accidents), none of them recently, and now find themselves ensconced in "new" physiques. Both the "newly returned" and the surviving families of three of the patients are at a loss as to how to react: their loved ones died, now they're alive, except they're not, this is somebody else.

Author P. D. Cacek approaches this baffling conundrum marvellously, giving really four different scenarios of working out these situations. She totally puts all the characters through their paces, and if we don't always admire some of them, certainly we are given a deep comprehension of their natures. Yes, there's character evolution, too, thankfully.

SECOND LIVES is a wonderfully stunning novel, and a definite candidate to reread.

This book is amazing and full of food for thought. It's a page turner you cannot put down and a very well written book.
I cannot find anything negative to say, I liked everything.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Flame Tree Press and Netgalley for this ARC

Review Copy

The description of this book is long so there is no reason for me to rehash it. If you haven't read it, GOOD! Don't! Take the title and the recommend and dive in. I couldn't devour this novel fast enough.

And a novel novel it is. I can't recall reading anything quite like it. Cacek took a tough subject (life and death) and looked at it from a brand new perspective. She created a multitude of characters that were separate and distinct and wholly their own. And while I did have questions about some people and things, I was willing to overlook them because I felt it adding more information might gum up the story.

The story is nicely broken up into easy to follow sections. By the third section, I was snatching tissues to wipe my eyes; soon I was beginning to weep. I realized I had to stop or I couldn't finish the book, but finish I did through blurry eyes.

This is a wow. Try it.

I had read some shorts of Cacek's before, this was the first novel. Second Lives follows the tragic end of four people and their re-birth in recently deceased people. The book does a great job of giving the backstory, but the true heart is in how their love ones cope. Imagining the body of your loved one carrying someone else's soul is difficult, and Cacek does an amazing job of showing the different ways the characters cope.

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I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Not too long ago there was a trend…stories about the dead coming back to life and we’re not talking zombies. Actual persons returning from the dead to have another go at life. Jason Mott’s Returned might have been the first book with the premise, I read it, it disappointed. But nevertheless got adapted into a tv show. And then there was something of a proliferation of similar themed tv shows from around the world. I’ve watched and abandoned two. None were quite right in their approach to the subject, it seems. Until this book. Second Lives actually (mostly) gets it right. Certainly closer to my idea of how such stories should be done. It’s purely character driven and it does great job on the characters. It doesn’t get dragged down with explanations of the inexplicable, but provides enough to suspend (or sufficiently adjust disbelief) and it engages completely. In fact, at first there is a dizzying amount of characters are timelines thrown at the reader, but they are all distinct enough to manage and when the pot strings start tying together it congeals into something infinitely more satisfying than a word like congeals inherently implies. It becomes a complexly compelling narrative of impossible situations, presented with as much realism as such a scenario can support. A story of ordinary families rearranged, lives forever altered in unfathomable ways, but also a story of miracles accepted (eventually) with the appropriate welcome (albeit reluctantly) and kindness. Flaming Tree is a new publisher and previous samplings have led me to expect speculative fiction along the more traditional lines, but this book was much more of work of contemporary fiction with first rate character writing and the only possible critique would be that in the end it turned (quite abruptly, like seriously barely enough time passes even for the most resilient of spirits) into something like a heartwarming Christmas story. Well, at least the Christmas wasn’t that long ago, this was practically a thematic read. Very good one too, great story, maybe with too neat of a wrapped up with ribbons and bow on top ending, but still. Very good. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.