Book Review: The Five People you meet in Heaven

Review on: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Rating: 3.5/5

Recommended

A story of a man who risks his life for the sake of another, and ends up in Heaven where he meets five different people who’ve made an impact on his life. The Five People You Meet in Heaven is another sentimental and inspiring book by Mitch Albom, which again delves into the human life and the human soul.

In many ways, this book does have simlarities toFor One More Day (also by Mitch Albom) in regard to experiencing “death” and the role of important people in our lives, but in many ways, it also discusses different things. While For One More Day discusses life and the decisions we make in life and how it relates to us in general, The Five People You Meet in Heaven discusses life and how different people have affected the decisions we have made in our lives. Sometimes, the people we least expect to have made a decision on our lives, end up being integral foundations of things we’ve done in our life.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is an interesting book that gives us a possible outcome to life after death. What if in reality, after-death is simply about learning about things in our life and how they came to be. It’s an interesting aspect to tackle since people tell us that after-death is simply about us being knowledgeable about everything, this book tackles a possible answer to how we become knowledgeable about certain things. That’s is basically how the story goes. The main character learns about how certain things in life came to be, and how mistaken he was about how he thought things had turned out. He meets people whom he has both met, and not met, but had a life-changing impact on his life.

One of the interesting things that might pique the interest of fellow Filipinos is that the Philippines is actually included in the book. It is described in a very interesting time, in a time of war, WW2 supposedly. Mitch Albom does his research as he also includes Filipino words into the story.

What I loved most about the book is how Mitch Albom’s story allows us to see how everyone in the world is in one-way an influence to our lives. It clearly justifies what I have learned so far in my Philosophy class about how everything or everyone is in some way formed by their environment, yet what happens after is not necessarily the effect of influences. Quite a wonderful point-of-view to tackle for the story. In my opinion though, this book is not meant for very young audiences as it includes some images that are not suitable to someone of a young age. Also, there were some parts in the book which I thought could have been explained further, such as the explanation of the whole 5-people-you-meet-in-Heaven concept. That part of the book wasn’t fully explained, though the jist of how you get to meet such people was stated. I had hoped that Mitch Albom could have explained that part a bit further, especially to clarify why specifically 5 people, or how one can clearly distinguish which 5 in our lives we can consider for this kind of thing. But then again, there is also beauty in the mystery of the concept. Of course, how can one also fully conceptualize something which transcends life~ 🙂