The Next Person You Meet in Heaven: The Sequel to The Five People You Meet in Heaven

by Mitch Albom

Overview

In this enchanting sequel to the #1 bestseller The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom tells the story of Eddie’s heavenly reunion with Annie—the little girl he saved on earth—in an unforgettable novel of how our lives and losses intersect.

In Mitch Albom’s beloved novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the world fell in love with Eddie, a grizzled war veteran-turned-amusement park mechanic who died saving the life of a young girl named Annie. Eddie’s journey to heaven taught him that every life matters. Now, in this magical sequel, Albom reveals Annie’s story.

The accident that killed Eddie left an indelible mark on Annie. It took her left hand, which needed to be surgically reattached. Injured, scarred, and unable to remember why, Annie’s life is forever changed by a guilt-ravaged mother who whisks her away from the world she knew. Bullied by her peers and haunted by something she cannot recall, Annie struggles to find acceptance as she grows. When, as a young woman, she reconnects with Paulo, her childhood love, she believes she has finally found happiness.

As the novel opens, Annie is marrying Paulo. But when her wedding night day ends in an unimaginable accident, Annie finds herself on her own heavenly journey—and an inevitable reunion with Eddie, one of the five people who will show her how her life mattered in ways she could not have fathomed.

Poignant and beautiful, filled with unexpected twists, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven reminds us that not only does every life matter, but that every ending is also a beginning—we only need to open our eyes to see it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062294456
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	13,929
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	HL630L (what's this?)

About the Author

Mitch Albom is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold more than forty million copies in forty-seven languages worldwide. He has written seven number-one New York Times bestsellers – including Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time, which topped the list for four straight years – award-winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. Through his work at the Detroit Free Press, he was inducted into both the National Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports halls of fame and is the recipient of the 2010 Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement. After bestselling memoir Finding Chika and “Human Touch,” the weekly serial written and published online in real-time to raise funds for pandemic relief, his latest work is a return to fiction with The Stranger in the Lifeboat (Harper, November 2021). He founded and oversees SAY Detroit, a consortium of nine different charitable operations in his hometown, including a nonprofit dessert shop and food product line to fund programs for Detroit’s most underserved citizens. He also operates an orphanage in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, which he visits monthly. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan. Learn more at www.mitchalbom.com, www.saydetroit.org, and www.havefaithaiti.org.

Hometown:

Franklin, Michigan

Date of Birth:

May 23, 1958

Place of Birth:

Passaic, New Jersey

Education:

B.A., Brandeis University, 1979; M.J., Columbia University, 1981; M.B.A., Columbia University, 1982

Editorial Reviews

[Albom’s] new novel offers unexpected twists and clever turns that will delight his passionate fans.

AARP Magazine

As Annie learns her lessons about the meaning and value of both life and death, Albom wraps up this heartfelt fable with a totally unexpected twist. Order plenty of copies, and warn readers to keep their hankies handy!

Booklist

“Albom’s gift for storytelling continues to shine in this sequel.” — Library Journal

“[Albom’s] new novel offers unexpected twists and clever turns that will delight his passionate fans.” — AARP Magazine

“Fans of the first book will have plenty to appreciate here.” — Publishers Weekly

“It’s a tale filled with joy, heart and wisdom, and it’s a reminder to cherish those we love most.” — Woman’s World Magazine

From the Publisher

It’s a tale filled with joy, heart and wisdom, and it’s a reminder to cherish those we love most.

Woman’s World Magazine

As Annie learns her lessons about the meaning and value of both life and death, Albom wraps up this heartfelt fable with a totally unexpected twist. Order plenty of copies, and warn readers to keep their hankies handy!

Booklist

It’s a tale filled with joy, heart and wisdom, and it’s a reminder to cherish those we love most.

Women's World Magazine

It’s a tale filled with joy, heart and wisdom, and it’s a reminder to cherish those we love most.

Woman's World Magazine

09/01/2018
Annie's life has never been easy, especially after the tragic incident at Ruby Piers amusement park. As a little girl, then as a teen, she struggles with the physical and emotional issues regarding her reattached hand. Annie blames herself for every bad incident in her life. The winds shift as she reconnects with Paulo, her best friend from high school, after years apart. Now Annie and Paulo have just begun a new chapter as a wedded couple. Excitement turns to fear as a terrible tragedy sends them both to the emergency room just hours after the ceremony. When Annie wakes up in heaven, she encounters the five beings that most influenced the course of her life. They skillfully guide her past her self-recriminations to show her the beauty and grace of our interconnected lives. VERDICT Albom's gift for storytelling continues to shine in this sequel to his best-selling The Five People You Meet in Heaven. With true-to-life characters, this quick parable serves as a reminder that through empathy and forgiveness, we can survive our losses. In turn, our troubles are mere beginnings to a future of wonderful possibilities. [See Prepub Alert, 4/23/18.]—Joy Gunn, Paseo Verde Lib., Henderson, NV

Library Journal

2018-07-02
Albom (The Magic Strings of Frankie Pesto, 2015, etc.) returns to the scene of previous literary crime: heaven, that is, and the realm of departed folks who are only too glad to dispense advice."This is a story about a woman named Annie, and it begins at the end, with Annie falling from the sky." In this sequel to The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003), gruff Eddie the maintenance man gets to have a little chat with the aforementioned Annie, for whom he gave up his life in a freak roller-coaster accident in the first book, sparing her from death. So what's she doing up in the afterlife? Well, it seems Annie has fallen in love, married, and then honored the event by going up in a hot air balloon. What is it with her and divergent modes of transportation? And now, thanks to high-tension wires, Annie has bitten the big one—or maybe not—and is wandering around in the clouds reliving past mistakes and holding self-discovery sessions with, yes, five of her predecessors in the dirt nap. You'd think Eddie would be a little ticked that he lost a decade to a woman who seemed destined for the express checkout lane in any case, especially because, Albom writes, "She never thought about heaven." He adds, helpfully, "But heaven is always thinking about us." Yep, and yuck. There's more than a little of The Little Prince here ("A vast brown desert surrounded her. / And she was alone") and more than a little too much wisdom ("We don't realize who else we punish while we're punishing ourselves"). A question: Isn't it a cheat when one of the dead quintet is a dog? And further: If you avoid death proper but have met your allotted five people in the great fluffy cloud beyond during your near-death experience, do you have to meet five other people when your time actually does come? Isn't that fudging the numbers?For those who prize fortune-cookie philosophy and sticky-sweet resolutions, this is just the ticket to ride.

Kirkus Reviews