Meet Me in Another Life

I had no words when I finished this book and I don't think my review will capture how much I loved this. I do think that this could be my favourite book of this year and I will definitely be buying a physical copy once it is out. I don't usually post eBook reviews on Instagram but I definitely think Meet Me in Another Life deserved a space on my grid.

Meet Me in Another Life was not what I expected at all. Based on the title, cover and what I remembered of the synopsis, I was expecting this to be romance or to lean towards the YA side but it didn't.

At first, I found the chapters a little confusing but at the same time, it had me hooked. I couldn't work out why the characters had the same name, looks and characteristics in each life, what their relationship ultimately was and why was Cologne so important so I started treating this like a mystery, marking down what I thought could've been clues (thinking back, I must've missed so many!). The further into the book I got, the more obvious the clues were but there was no way I could've predicted the ending. There was something mentioned in the early chapters that didn't that mean much until the ending and it was so, so smart!

This book is just so unique and I will definitely be recommending it to everyone I know.

Wow! Just wow! I can't even begin to describe just how much I loved this book. This novel is unique, clever, magical, emotional, questioning. It's just brilliant. A new bar has been set.

Santi and Thora are destined to keep meeting in subsequent lives and they are in a race against time to decipher why.

I love how the chapters are mini life stories that feature the intimate cast of the previous lives as well as tokens, themes and clues. It reads like a 'sliding doors' effect, with multiple doors and choices to select from.

Read this book if you are looking for an escape within real life. I suppose there is a small touch of sci-fi but definitely not the romance I was expecting. In fact it was anything but. It was a pleasure to read throughout.

It is such an amazing read. A perfect gift for friends, colleagues, your mum

“I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.” Borges. The Garden of the Forking Paths

Are our lives determined our choices? Are we truly free exert our free-will, or are our choices determined by our circumstances, the people around us, the cards we’re dealt with, or by a higher power? Do we make our choices because or the kind of people we are, or is the kind of people we’ve become determined by our previous choices? Is there a right path? Are faith and science incompatible?

We first meet Thora as a physics student in Cologne: a culmination of all the choices she has made, the path that she has chosen, one possibility among several others. And she wishes she could start again. She meets Santi, an intruder in her universe, gazing at the stars. He’s so different than her: he believes in God, and in fate, and in a higher plan. And yet, they both want to explore the universe and see what no one else has seen. In this life their relationship is cut abruptly, a tragic end to something that could have been. But they’ll meet again, and again, and again. Same city, different relationships: friends, lovers, enemies, partners... always bound together, trying to make sense of it all.

In Meet Me in Another Life, Catriona Silvey created a tight-knit universe, with carefully selected words and images, riddled with clues and full of meaning. Still, the book is never predictable and you’ll be taken on this journey, alongside Thora and Santi, until the very end — and it doesn’t disappoint.

I haven’t felt this excited about a book in a very long time and upon finishing it, I felt like reading it again.

This was a fantastic, thought-provoking read! I love books that have multiple stories of the same people, though I usually find the endings very unsatisying, that certainly wasn't the case here. The heart of the book is about relationships in all their forms, and the consequences of your choices. I absolutely loved it!

This book was amazing. From page one I knew this book was going to good. The story and relationship between our two leads was beautiful, and seeing how they grew through time until the end was beautiful.
I will be recommending this book to all my friends and family. Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!

A stunning, magical tale that explores the complexities of life and love.

Are our younger selves simply different from us now or did those earlier selves cause us to be who we are? If we change over time or transform into someone new, how does that affect the idea of a soulmate? If we could live many lives, our love stories could reveal something critical.

In Meet me in another life we see these love stories connected not only through romantic love but across a spectrum of love for example platonic friendships or parental love.

This idea, that who we are, and who we love are intimately connected with the lives we and others have led are woven throughout its narrative. It left me thinking If we evolve across time does that affect the construct of love.

it is difficult to describe how moving and beautiful this novel is. I was enthralled by it and stunned by the author's exquisite writing. Her ability to write such vivid worlds and craft such an intelligent plot is breath-taking.

I adore Thora and Santi in their many reincarnations, even when they were at their very worse. In each one, I learnt something more about them and got closer to the truth. It was written in such a manner that I felt part of their investigation and searched for clues alongside them. The reveal had my heart breaking.

Ultimately this is a book about love and you will lose yourself in the wonderful world of Thora and Santi just as I did.

Highly Recommended for fans of The Time Traveller's Wife and The Invisible Life of Addie. Or if you just want something very special to read.

I'm not too sure how to summarise this book, and I tried on my blog but I will spare you here where you can see an actual official blurb, but I can say that giving the plot of this book away would be a real crime that I cannot have on my conscience because I enjoyed every second of the way that it unfolded before me last night when I read the majority of it in one go (leading me to finally go to sleep at 3am, whoops).

This book attempted to tackle some lofty topics and I would not say that it always succeeded in delivering fulfilling answers, but it never felt forced. The questions Thora and Santi are trying to find answers to are crucial to their experiences across their different lives and to their overall beings.

I read this immediately after reading "The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano" which was interesting because that book also explores alternate lives and something I liked about Rose Napolitano was the protagonist’s consistent voice across those lives. Meet Me In Another Life may rely slightly more on telling rather than showing in some ways, as most of the consistent characterisation comes from things like Santi’s ways of coping with what is happening in the world around him through documentation and creativity, or Thora’s penchant for colourful hair-dye regardless of which life she is living. However, the characters do develop in a satisfying way across all of the vignettes that form the overall arc.

And yes, there is a real story arc. Initially I was a little worried that it would feel directionless and lacking in plot due to the nature of the first few chapters which really do just feel like separate little stories played out by the same cast, but I was absolutely 100% wrong about that. The book is split into three parts and from part two you can easily see that what separates these sections is knowledge that you as the reader but also Thora and Santi acquire about the nature of their existence.

It’s difficult for me to find anything else to criticise, I loved this book. I don’t know if I could read it again because I’ll never have that same experience again, but I won’t be forgetting about it in a hurry.

This is the sort of book that defies description. I thought I knew what it was all about but was totally wrong. The premise is one that has been used before that two people keep meeting in different lives. The different lives are well thought out and as the story progresses more and more unlocks about the two of them.
The story keeps you going all the way through until the final pages. It totally absorbed me from the first to the last page and it is a book I will remember for a very long time. A must read.

My thanks to Catriona Silvey, Harper Collins and Net Galley for the ARC of MEET ME IN ANOTHER LIFE.
At first I wasn't sure what I was reading. I began to understand that each 'chapter' was a separate story with the same characters, Thora and Sante, with the same cast of family and friends, Jules, Heloise and even the cat. But then I realised that the different stories were actually taking place in Cologne and were leading to something greater than the individual stories. I began to think of Philip K Dick, a writer of science fiction with themes that included simulacra and perception. Two thirds of the way in and I wondered if this was an alternate reality of two people living in a world where they were being observed, like the Truman Show. The final answer was not a huge shock, it had occurred to me amongst other endings I had thought of, but when it came it was heart-rending. It stayed with me. A very absorbing read,

This has been one of the most unique novels I’ve read in quite some time! It follows the main characters of Thora and Santi who go through lifetime after lifetime connected to each other and their quest to discover why this is happening. Such an easy to read and addictive book - I read it in one sitting! Highly recommended and I would read anything else by this author in a heartbeat. Perfection.

Meet me in another life by Catriona Silvey

Well what can I say about this book other than I loved it ! It's the best book I've read this year ( and I've read lots )

Thora & Santi meet , and then in another life they meet again , and again.
I love the fact they meet in all the circumstances you do meet people in. Friends , lovers , partners , and people you just can't get along with at all.
Sometimes barely fleeting , and other times not so . Each relationship means something , and they learn a new way of being , a life lesson to carry you through this life and into the next.
A compelling , clever and brilliant read. Bravo.

I can’t adequately describe this book or how much I loved this book, but I did. It is brilliant. I knew from the very beginning that I would enjoy this book and I was so right. It is such a complete piece of fiction. It is very cleverly written and so well plotted.. The writing perfectly builds the story up layer upon layer, life after life. The two main characters Thora and Santi are brilliantly written, as we get to know them lifetime after lifetime. This book isn’t a romance but it is about relationships, and love. This story evolves and you can feel yourself evolving with it. This book will stay with me for sometime and is definitely one of my favourite reads of 2021.

Thanks to HarperVoyager and NetGalley for an e-ARC of this book.

I loved this book. It started strong and didn't let up until the end. I can't even remember what made me request it on NetGalley, but I'm so glad I did.

Thora and Santi both live in Cologne in Germany. When the book opens, they meet at a party, but very soon afterwards Santi dies. And so begins countless cycles of Thora and Santi meeting, living and dying in Cologne, always as different people to their previous lives. Sometimes they are siblings, sometimes parent and child, sometimes married.

So I was only a few chapters in before I started speculating: magic or sci-fi. Obviously I won't give the game away by telling you how they keep meeting, but trust me: it's good.

Quite apart from the great plot, this book also has characters you can really believe in. Admittedly, the author has countless lifetimes to paint these people, but still they really come across as fully formed people.

This book has the wows and the feels and I can't wait until it's published so that I can talk to other people who've read it.

I absolutely adored this story. There was something so captivating about Thora and Santi's story and I fell fully into their world experiencing so many different emotions as the story unfolded. I wasn't prepared for the outcome but I thoroughly enjoyed the trip to get there. It's very hard to write a review for a book that captured me so much. The sheer brilliance of the story, the stunning author voice, and the love I felt for both of these characters as they struggled to uncover the truth of why. This is such a clever story and so unique. I can't wait to add the paperback to my shelves and recommend it to all my friends.

I loved this - such an original story with fabulous characters and a great setting. It made me want to go back to Cologne and hunt out all the places in the book! In some ways it was a novel of two halves, with a very different feel to it once the central mystery had been revealed, but I enjoyed both halves equally and it kept me gripped right to the end.

Beautiful read. What initially drew me to this book was the idea of past lives, of these two characters coming back again and again but somehow always finding each other. While this would form the basis for a pretty awesome story of star crossed lovers, Catriona Silvey takes this idea and makes it so much more interesting by switching this up. In some lives Thora and Santi are together, in others they have a strictly platonic relationship, in others they’re family but at the core – they have this complicated and enduring bond, this love that surpasses it all. Recommend as a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️