The Other Life by Ellen Meister
Goodreads Summary:
If you could return to the road not taken, would you?
Happily married and pregnant, Quinn Braverman has an ominous secret. Every time she makes a major life decision, she knows an alternate reality exists in which she made the opposite choice-not only that, she knows how to cross over. But even in her darkest moments-like her mother's suicide-Quinn hasn't been tempted to slip through...until she receives devastating news about the baby she's carrying.
The grief lures her to peek across the portal, and before she knows it she's in the midst of the other life: the life in which she married another man, and is childless. The life in which her mother is still very much alive.
Quinn is forced to make a heartbreaking choice. Will she stay with the family she loves and her severely disabled child? Or will an easier life-and the primal need to be with her mother-win out?
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Happily married and pregnant, Quinn Braverman has an ominous secret. Every time she makes a major life decision, she knows an alternate reality exists in which she made the opposite choice-not only that, she knows how to cross over. But even in her darkest moments-like her mother's suicide-Quinn hasn't been tempted to slip through...until she receives devastating news about the baby she's carrying.
The grief lures her to peek across the portal, and before she knows it she's in the midst of the other life: the life in which she married another man, and is childless. The life in which her mother is still very much alive.
Quinn is forced to make a heartbreaking choice. Will she stay with the family she loves and her severely disabled child? Or will an easier life-and the primal need to be with her mother-win out?
****************************************
Review:
How creepy would that be, knowing that you exist in an alternate reality? Just imagine if you make one decision but in an other life you make a different one and it's all happening at the same time.
I thought this book was gonna be a page turner but it turn out to be a let down for me. I'm not saying that it was bad, it just wasn't what I expected. I thought the whole alternate life thing was a good idea and I do like Meister's writing style but I personally didn't find the story that interesting.
I couldn't seem to care about the main character for some reason. In one life Quinn has a child and is pregnant with her second. She found this portal that she could go back and forth through to the alternate life.
A mother leaving her child that she loves so dearly for another life because she thinks she may be happier there, even for a little while, didn't feel believable. She just came across as selfish to me. But hey, that's just my two cents worth. I have seen a lot of four and five star reviews for this book...this just won't get that many stars from me.
2.75/5
That's too bad that the book didn't go so well, especially with an interesting theory.
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