The Other Life

5 out of 5

Ellen Meister has posed the question in The Other Life that many of us have asked ourselves silently but have not expressed out loud or visited even in our wildest dreams. What would have my life have been like if I had taken that other life? The Other Life we have all had, those forks in the road, where we parted ways with or lost a love, a family member, or a course in our career. What if we were able to go back and revisit ourselves in that other life as it went along a separate dimension prior the fork in the road, separate from the life we live now? Would we choose the same one or "The Other Life"? Tough question, and for each of us, the circumstances both present and past are different but no less difficult to choose between.

In the novel, Quinn Braverman is trying to choose between her present life which includes her adoring husband, her first child, and occurs during the pregnancy of her second child or her previous life with a very famous but needy, non committal boyfriend of 10 years and her mother. Her mother had committed suicide shortly after her "fork in the road" and the marriage to her present husband, and before the birth of either of her children. Her mother is who she misses terribly, and needs to connect with her for advice. Even though she is angry at her mother for leaving all of them, she can revisit the place where neither of them knew what the future held or what part the past had played to set up their future lives. Unfortunately, for Quinn, when she visits this other life she does so through the apartment that she occupied with her boyfriend of 10 years and he becomes a participant in her other life.

This may be starting to sound like another version of The Time Traveler's Wife but it isn't. Don't get me wrong. I loved that book as well but I did not even associate the two until long after I finished The Other Life.

Enjoy this book, and see if you can answer the question and make the decision Quinn had to make.