This novel follows Annie, a newly married woman, who was also the child Eddie saved in the first novel. After a wondrous wedding day, Annie and her husband, Pablo, decide to go for an evening hot air balloon ride. Things change after this ride, and both Annie and Pablo are forever changed.
This was not as good as Five People You Meet in Heaven. Annie is not as compelling of a character as Eddie was in the first novel. She whines a lot about the hand that was cut off and reattached in the first novel. She feels that she has never done anything right, and that her entire live is a mistake. This only makes her character unlikable, and overly dramatic. Throughout the scenes with people she meets she continually asks the same questions, and it becomes repetitive and dull.
Each of the people Annie meets is predictable, and none really seem to add to the story as once again she continues to question and state that she was a mistake. In the end, it seems as if we were misled as what happened to Annie isn't what we expected.
I don't care if a book or movie misleads me, but I don't like a book that lies to me, and I am not sure Annie was the character this book should have been written about. I would have liked to see a new story, and a new person that had nothing to do with the original book. The ending felt forced to give the reader a feel good moment, but it wasn't necessary, as in the original (SPOILER here is you haven't read the first book) Eddie dies. He gets answers, and he gets happiness (even in death), but it feels like a real story, not a forced story written to make money.
I wanted to love this novel, as I did Five People You Meet in Heaven, but it is too forced, and I didn't love it.