The Next Person You Meet in Heaven: The sequel to The Five People You Meet in Heaven: A gripping and life-affirming novel from a globally bestselling author

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With fourteen hours left to live, Annie took her wedding vows. She and Paulo stood beneath a canopy by a blueberry lake. They had lost touch as teenagers, and only recently had reunited. The years between were hard for Annie. She endured bad relationships. She suffered much loss. She came to believe she would never love a man again, and certainly never marry. This part made me really emotional and I just couldn't stop crying..it was difficult for me to continue reading the book.) THE NEXT PERSON YOU MEET IN HEAVEN is a sequel to The Five People You Meet in Heaven. When Annie was only eight-years-old she lost her left hand in a horrific accident at the Ruby Pier amusement park. The hand was surgically reattached but it left an indelible mark on Annie’s life. She doesn’t remember the tragic accident that killed Eddie, the amusement park mechanic but it left her scarred and the subject of ridicule. Annie struggles to find acceptance throughout her life, but feels as if everything she does is a mistake. When she reunites with Paulo, a childhood friend, she knows she has finally found happiness. They marry and this is where Annie’s story begins. A romantic hot-air balloon ride the morning after the wedding ends in tragedy when Annie falls from the sky. She is whisked into her own heavenly journey, where she reunites with Eddie and learns how her life on earth affected others.

I really enjoyed reading The Five People You Meet In Heaven so I was happy to see that Mitch Albom had written a sequel to it, but at the same time I was a little apprehensive. What if this book was not as good? What was I worried about, this book is just as good. I did rate the first book 5 stars but this book is a shorter story so that's the reason why I've just given it 4 stars. Mitch Albom knows how to write beautiful stories with marvellous characters. There is an underlying message in this story. This book can be read as a standalone but I do recommend you read The Five People You Meet In Heaven first. She encountered a grave and met Eddie, the maintenance worker who had saved her years ago. Annie touched his hand and saw his entire life, childhood through his death. Annie told him about her life and how the accident scarred her physically and emotionally. The landscape changed and they found themselves in the Philippines, where Eddie served during World War II. He was imprisoned, and after his escape, he set a village on fire, accidentally killing a girl. The girl, Tala, appeared, and told Annie that Eddie died saving her. Annie then witnessed her accident for the first time. She was overcome by emotion and realized the guilt she felt all her life stemmed from the accident. Eddie told Annie that saving her was his salvation, his atonement for killing Tala, and that she needed to forgive herself for her mistakes. Before parting, Eddie handed her Laurence, her child, and Annie was able to hold him and feel for a moment before he vanishes as well. Eddie: The protagonist and main character around whom the story centers; at the start of the story, he is killed on his 83rd birthday.I’ve been an enormous fan of the work of Mitch Albom for a few years and I’ve read all of his books - each one has taught me different valuable life lessons, everything from finding that little bit of extra empathy for people, to really listening and finding understanding for what matters to us all individually. Since that day in her childhood, Annie's life has been rough. Her mum was constantly off with boyfriends, and set Annie really strict rules on not leaving the house, and socializing in an effort to protect her. True love is rare to find, no matter how hard it is, you’ll find a way to get to the person who you truly care for. True love can move mountains even to the most impossible ways just to be with that person who you want to be in your life. “You lose something everyday you live , sometimes it’s as tiny as the breath you just expelled, sometimes it’s so big you think you won’t survive it.” The accident made news around the state. Journalists labeled Annie The Little Miracle of Ruby Pier. Strangers prayed for her. Some even sought an encounter, as if, through being saved, she held a secret to immortality.

The story follows what the title says. It's about the next five people the one who's leaving is going to meet and learn some important life lessons. I recommend this novel to everyone because it is not only can make you cry but it makes you inspire that life is a beautiful thing to happen. It gives you that every day is a blessing just like in this novel. This can be an inspiration to us that there is light in every tunnel we face in. As a nurse, Annie wore blue scrubs and gray running shoes to her job at a nearby hospital. And it was at that hospital where she would leave this world—after a dramatic and tragic accident—one month shy of her thirty-first birthday. I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom in 2013 when my reading tastes were very different so I was a little apprehensive going into this sequel. I would suggest that this is more of a companion novel to be honest as it is of course useful to have read the previous one, it isn't necessary. Eddie awakens to see children playing along with a riverbed. A young Filipina girl named Tala comes up to him. Tala reveals that she was the little girl from the hut that Eddie set on fire. Distraught, Eddie breaks down both cursing and asking God "why?" Tala hands him a stone and asks him to "wash" her like the other children in the river are doing to one another. Eddie is puzzled, but dips the stone in the water and starts to scrape off the injuries he had inflicted on her. Tala's wounds begin to clear until she is freed of all the scars. Eddie asks Tala if she knows if he was able to save the little girl before his death. Tala tells him he did manage to push her out of the way. In this way, Tala explains, he also managed to atone every day for her unnecessary death.

Publisher’s Note:

Fifteen years ago, 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, Mitch Albom reveals Annie’s story. A pipe cleaner rabbit—like the one Paulo just gave her—had been in Annie’s hands the day of the fateful accident, a gift from the whiskered old man she was seeing now at her wedding. On his 83rd birthday, amusement park ride mechanic Eddie is killed in an accident when a ride breaks down. During the accident, he makes a desperate attempt to save a little girl's life.

The sequel of “The Five People You Meet In Heaven” by Mitch Albom which is “The Next Person You Meet In Heaven” is focusing on Annie’s story which Eddie saved from Freddy’s Free Fall accident. The prequel focuses on meeting Eddie’s people that are important in his life and learning from the lessons of life. In this sequel, Annie saw and met people that are important in her life and learning her life and her story. Eddie meets his late wife, Marguerite. They remember their wedding, and Marguerite teaches Eddie that love is never lost in death; it just moves on and takes a different form. You might say that is too young to die. But what is too young for a life? As a child, Annie had been spared from death once, in another accident at a place called Ruby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean. Some said her survival was a miracle.

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I won't give away much because of spoilers, but as it states in the blurb, on Annie's wedding night, her life is changed forever, and she dies. Fifteen years ago, 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, Mitch Albom reveals Annie’s story. Eddie meets his former captain from the army, who reminds Eddie of their time together as prisoners of war in a forced labor camp in the Philippines. Their group burned the camp during their escape and Eddie, while running away, remembers seeing a shadow move in one of the huts. The Captain confesses that he shot Eddie in the leg to prevent Eddie from chasing the shadow into the fire. This saved Eddie's life despite leaving him with a lifelong severe limp. Eddie then learns how the Captain died: he stepped on a land mine that would have killed all the men had he not set it off. Annie regained consciousness but found herself in a swirl of blue colors and sounds. She had no body and when the blue faded away, she was in a train with a young boy, Sameer. Though she could not talk, Sameer could hear her thoughts. He told her he was the first person she would meet in heaven but he did not tell her anything about Paulo. He was supposed to teach her a lesson and he showed a younger version of him running alongside a speeding train, only to have his arm ripped off when he grabbed a railing. Sameer explained that his accident allowed doctors to work on new methods of replanting limbs. Inspired by his accident, Sameer grew up to become a doctor specializing in re-plantation. He showed her laying in the hospital bed as a young girl, revealing that it was he who operated on her hand. With the revelation, Annie's damaged hand appeared and Sameer reminded her that life is built on the foundations laid by who came before. Twelve hours left. Annie and Paulo took the dance floor, beneath strings of white bulbs. Paulo raised an arm and said, Ready? and Annie remembered a night in a junior high school gymnasium, when she marched up to Paulo and said, You’re the only boy who talks to me, so tell me right now if you will dance with me, yes or no, because otherwise I’m gonna go home and watch TV.