Book Review: Meet me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey

Posted 25th Jul 2021 by radiosarahc13 Comments on Book Review: Meet me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey 52 Books Blog

I don’t think a book has ever surprised me more than Meet Me In Another Life. 

I could have written multiple predictions about what I thought this book would be about and not a single one of them would be anywhere near close.

Thora and Santi meet by chance in Cologne at university. She’s escaped a ‘welcome party’ she’s not overly keen on ‘mixing’ and finds it too loud; she finds Santi lying on ground staring at the stars. 

They connect on a strange level and then the link is seemingly severed and it appears it’s all over for them before it’s really even started…..or is it?

Well, no, obviously. It would be a very short book if it was.

Thora and Santi will meet again and again and again in different lives. They’ll have different roles in those lives, friend, teacher, student, parent, sibling, lover, colleagues but each time they still share this strange, unbreakable connection. They share a love of the stars and are always in Cologne.

Thora and Santi are so different from each other, they don’t appear to be a natural pairing for friendship. 

They are completely different from one another in how they think and act.

She’s quite headstrong and at times cold; he’s much more calm and open. He believes in a higher power; he believes in determinism and that every action is part of a bigger plan. Thora does not, she believes in free will.

Admittedly, I thought this was heading down a twisty, magical, romance plot, filled with will they/won’t they moments. Meet me in another life is not like that at all. I suppose in a way you could say it is kind of a love story but it’s more about friendship and a mutual respect these two have for each other.

“You can’t ever know someone completely. You have to be everything to them and that’s impossible.” Catriona Silvey

I was worried that this would be a series of chapters showing them living different lives, with no real conclusion. That was until they both slowly started to see certain constants and coincidences in each life and started to question what was really happening; why could they remember certain things? They slowly started to wake up and question the lives they were in.

The points that I was questioning – why always Cologne? Why always the same supporting characters? Why is there always a cat? – all becomes clear in the big reveal and it all makes perfect sense.

I didn’t see the twists coming. 

I spent a lot of time trying to work out where this book was going. I had theories about what was going on, why Thora and Santi seemed doomed to live multiple lives with each other and what was drawing them together, I was wrong at every turn, and it meant I tore through this book so I could get the answers.

I don’t think I can define the genre of this book, it has a little bit of everything, there’s adventure, there’s mystery, there’s wonderfully believable characters, there’s a touch of magic and great relationships.

Catriona Silvey succeeded in surprising me right up to the final page – I can’t remember the last time a book did that. 

The ending gobsmacked me – if you’re looking for something out of this world and VERY different then Meet me in another life will hook you in from start to finish….it may also remind to look at the stars from time to time.

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Journalist, writer, traveller, music lover, collector of hats, news addict, bookworm