Santi meets Thora for the first time when he is 45, and she walks into his science classroom, a seven year old student who dreams of the stars; when he walks into her medical practice as an elderly patient; when her parents adopt him, aged five, as her brother; when they face each other on opposing sides of a bloody civil war. Life after life, haunted by impossible memories, Thora and Santi manage to find each other. But how is it possible to remember lives never lived, to meet someone over and over for the very first time? And is there a deeper mystery to the patterns of their strange existence? Santi’s heart jumps. Then he sees the phone cradled in her other hand, hears a woman’s voice on the other end. He listens, eyes fixed on the stars. Kudos should also be given to Atherton for her excellent narration. How she’s able to give Thora and Santi many different voices is simply amazing!! If you want to read an incredible debut, mark down MEET ME IN ANOTHER LIFE now… IT BLEW MY MIND. It is what fans of the THE TIME-TRAVELER’S WIFE have been craving.”

If you don’t have stringent requirements for watertight genres in your books, and you like books that make you wonder what would you do if you were in that character’s position, do give this book a try. It was a fabulous listening experience for me. There is a message here, a code for him to decipher. As usual, he can’t concentrate hard enough to understand. Thora stands next to him without looking at him, following the unwritten rule of public spaces. Santi savors the asymmetric knowledge it gives him. Alone, together, they look up at the map of a cosmos that never existed. Her hand moves as if to catch hold of the glowing lights.Meet Me in Another Life entirely relies on the two main characters with few secondary characters (special mention to Jules, Brigitta, and Félicette), but Silvey draws them in a manner that makes you really care for them. She doesn't shy away from their faults, and both Thora and Santi will behave at times in an appalling manner, and that makes them all the more human. Catriona Silvey was born in Glasgow and grew up in Perthshire and Derbyshire, which left her with a strange accent and a distrust of flat places. She overcame the latter to do a BA in English at Cambridge, and spent the next few years there working in scientific publishing. After that she moved to Edinburgh and did a PhD in language evolution, in the hope of finding out where all these words came from in the first place. With a big name attached to the project right away, the Meet Me In Another Life adaptation (based on the book by Catriona Silvey) has high expectations. A sci-fi love story that had the internet book community swooning as soon as it was released, this story is one we can’t wait to see on screen. Thora and Santi must seek out the reason behind their mysterious connection before their lives lead to a tragic end for the last time. The ending is not quite what you expect it to be – I was assuming that they both needed to right a wrong or start they both would need to aid each other in fulfilling their dreams. Showing how these questions of our existence are timeless and universal.

An intriguing thought experiment and a sweet, melancholy heartache of a novel. Santi and Thora’s bond, in the many varied forms it took from life to life, was moving and claustrophobic. Given the smaller spheres many of us are currently living within, their mutual reliance felt particularly poignant . . . and asks the reader how much we are shaped by the people we love.” It is unique and different. But things only start to make sense towards the end. Each story was good. But I'm not really a fan of short stories. And that is what most of this book felt like. I really wanted an epic love story. But in most of these stories they are not even a couple. This was a lot of fun! I love video game glitches – I grew up playing the Tomb Raider games, and one of my favourite things was to use the physics glitch near the door of Lara’s mansion to jump up onto the roof and swan-dive into her swimming pool. But dropping such a blatant glitch too near the beginning of the book would obviously give the game away! So instead, I started with the idea that if you lived inside a simulation, a bug would be indistinguishable from a miracle. Faced with an event that breaks the normal rules of reality, you effectively have two choices: either you decide something supernatural is going on, or you try and explain it away. And those possibilities map nicely onto Santi and Thora’s different ways of looking at the world. So really, I just focused on how each of them interprets the early glitches they encounter. That way, even when more outlandish things start happening, it all stays grounded in the reality of the characters.

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My only gripe, and it is minor, is that there seemed a bit too much exposition. There is nothing wrong with exposition, but the telling/showing seesaw felt a bit too heavy on one end at times. At the surface level, this seems like a weird combination of The Midnight Library (the book) and Groundhog Day (the movie). But this book is so much more than the repetition of lives. As I usually do, I started jotting down points I wanted to discuss in my review. And many of the points I wrote seemed to be plot holes. Why do these two keep meeting in some kind of strange reincarnation? Why is the city the same every time? Why don’t their names change in every lifetime? Why don’t the other persons in their lives change their relationships, how come only these two change? Why is the timeline not changing, how come every life seems to be in the same time period? And on and on… But then comes the Big Reveal at about 70%! (I’m not sure of the exact location because I was so stunned by it, I forgot to make a note of it!) Plot holes resolved, doubts clarified, mysteries uncovered, and all this leads to the discovery of a greater, more potent problem at hand. I couldn’t rest until I reached the ending from this point onwards!

Over time the common thread that ties the two together appears to be the recognition of each other as kindred spirits with similar souls who leave a mark on each other within the chapter of each life they live. The two share philosophies about family, about love, and about life in a way that bonds them on many levels. Ultimately, they both seek an escape from the lives they are living and both always seem to be looking towards the stars. But this is only one of the many connections they share. Like satellites trapped in orbit around each other, Thora and Santi are destined to meet again: as a teacher and prodigy student; a caretaker and dying patient; a cynic and a believer. In numerous lives they become friends, colleagues, lovers, and enemies. What I didn't like falls under two categories. One, is mostly on me. This was not the book for me at this time. I was looking for something romantic & uplifting, and this book is neither of those. That is NOT a bad thing--this book is many other good things--but I think the blurb (and the comparison to The Time Traveler's Wife) can sell people on romantic & uplifting. There is romance, but it's a subplot, and while I would call it a love story, but not a traditional romantic one. The book seems to fall in two distinct genres that don’t traditionally go hand in hand but blend wonderfully in this story. Of course, purists might not be able to put their head around this but as I am comfortable with almost all genres, I enjoyed that change in momentum and plot. I don’t want to reveal the second genre here as it will take away your fun of discovery, but the first half is much philosophical. It raises pertinent questions about determinism and free will voiced via Santi’s and Thora’s characters respectively. You too will find yourself pondering over deeper existential questions. But after the big reveal, the focus shifts to the other genre and I was so irritated with myself that I didn’t see it coming. There are enough clues and Easter eggs scattered throughout the story for the reader to be able to make the logical leap, but I was so caught up with the philosophical side of the story that I missed out on the obvious segue. It was very smart of the author. Science fiction can reach out to the stars and at the same time hold tight to the human heart. The many layers of mystery in this beautiful love story lead to a breathtaking ending."Meet Me In Another Life is the joyful, devastating and quietly profound debut speculative science fiction novel from Catriona Silvey in which it is asked: is it possible to remember someone you have seemingly never met ever before, and, if so, how? Thora Lišková and Santiago López meet for the first time when they are eighteen. Strangers in a foreign city, they both attend the campus at Cologne University in Germany, she as a student and he as a custodian. They bond over their shared ambition to travel to the stars. Thora thinks she’s finally found a kindred spirit, a friend for life. Until, days later, Santi is cruelly snatched away from her. That’s not the only way it happens. Santi meets Thora for the first time when he is 45, and she walks into his science classroom, a seven-year-old student who dreams of the stars; when he walks into her medical practice as an elderly patient; when her parents adopt him, aged five, as her brother; when they face each other on opposing sides of a bloody civil war. Life after life, haunted by impossible memories, Thora and Santi manage to find each other.