On the Other Side: The number one Sunday Times bestseller

I was a bit disappointed honestly. Like the idea? Really good! But I feel like Carrie tried too hard sometimes with making Evie not ordinary and the overall story. And Evies parents felt more like they are straight out of a children's book. But it's her first novel and she put a lot of effort in it and I am also very excited to read ATSCS ❤️

not even gonna try finishing it. my english is not that bad... but the sentences are confussing to me.

Ich mochte es wirklich! Wichtig zu sagen ist, dass man viel Fantasie für das Buch braucht und es eher als Märchen, als Disneygeschichte angesehen sein sollte, realistisch denken ist da fehl am Platz. Aber es war wirklich märchenhaft schön und bewegend! Besonderer Pluspunkt natürlich für die schöne, lockere Einbindung von homosexuellen, bisexuellen und pansexuellen Charakteren, was ein tolles Beispiel für andere Bücher sein sollte.

I was actually excited to read this book and overall it wasn't a horrible book, I read worse this year already, which mostly speaks of my poor book choices in these last months. But I definitely have some strong opinions regarding this one: The writing was decent, about as much what I expect from books written by Youtubers who's main talents lie elsewhere. The characters felt slightly two-dimensional, especially Evie (who actually felt like a complete self-insert, mostly cause of her description, I can't say too much about her character). But after all of these 400 pages, I still don't feel like I know any of these people. I can tell you that her childhood friend Jim looks like a greek god and always loved Evie, but I have no idea what he was actually like, loving her was like his main characteisitc and I didn't even get that. I also don't know why I started with him, when Evie is main character. She is just the most lovable person, I can say that. Extremely special and nice and kind and always fighting for her future (for some reason she only started doing that at 27 and it's never mentioned why all of this took her so long). She has parents who are cold but she still loves them? I'm not sure, the book isn't sure about it either. And her brother doesn't appear until the plot calls for him and then isn't really established either. Not to forget her one true love Vincent. Can't say anything more than that he is that. Well he's also bisexual, that's a defining trait, he hooked up with a man once, but other than that it's not important anymore. Plays the violin and loves his mum and of course thinks Evie is the most special person in the universe after spending a couple hours with her. I feel like I'm too mean about this, but it really felt like I was reading some cardboard cutouts with a couple of definitions scribbled onto them live through fixed plot points, that mostly didn't even make sense. The story already started quite surreal, with her being able to go back and leave messages for her family and so on, but it went completely over board, when Evie and Vincent started sending letter over a dove and not like one would actually do it, they wrote ON the bird. On its wing! I think this was the first time I actually face palmed and I didn't think it would get worse but it did. It really felt like I was pulled into this world of magical realism, where everything was normal and magic wasn't a thing but no one was even slightly concerned when these things happened. So let's start from quite in the beginning. There are these three secrets Evie has to tell the world to be free and go to heaven. The first one is that she send love letters over a bird until said bird was completely black with ink but somehow they could still read what they told each other? I didn't get this part and it got even more ridiculous when like 50 years in the future her son found this same bird and cleaned it with his hands. But not only did he clean it, he somehow got the words on his hands and from his hands into a notebook so he had this notebook full of Evies and Vincents love letters. Before this happened I was still kinda into the story, thinking it would get better or more intriguing with the secrets, but after this I just kind of gave up. Evies mother managed to force her to give up on her dreams and Vincent and marry her childhood friend Jim. Who looks like a greek god and she gets weak knees when she sees him but it's impossible for her to ever love him. She mostly gets married to Jim, because she wants to take care of her brother after his coming out and subsequent being thrown out of the house. Eddie, the little brother, doesn't really get anything more of a character than gay and little brother. He laughs with Jim sometimes and later has a boyfriend he loves and I think he likes coffee, not sure though. I would have enjoyed for the only character in a gay relationship to get a bit more time and development, but apparently next to the BIG love story of Vincent and Evie (which basically ended because she thought she couldn't earn enough money to support Eddie when marrying Vincent, as if the three of them couldn't all work and get in some money or maybe Jim could support his friend or whatever). I definitely sound too mean about all this. I don't want to, but this story had these moments with very obvious solutions and Evie always just resigned, it's like she never even wanted to reach her dreams and be with Vincent, she gave up on everything so freaking easily. And now to the part that really made me give up. When this happened I knew there was no coming back, no possible redemption whatsoever. Before her wedding to Jim, Evie went back to her house and buried her heart. Her actual beating heart. She opened her rib cage, looked at her heart and just buried it. I'm still so confused about this. She just took out her heart and buried it and got married. She went on living happily. Without a heart. That was buried and turned into a tree. A tree, which Vincent would visit after her death, eat the fruit of and then just straight up die. Because OF COURSE he would die out there where she buried her heart. Oh, and the bird died then too, got caught up in the tree or something. I read very quickly, I was quite done. If you read through all this spoiler rant, I'm sorry about all the negativity, but I was just so at awe with how far of the rails this whole story had gone. The second the bird showed up everything stopped making sense. Okay, I took a little breather and I'm back and mostly calm again. This isn't a horrible book after all. Was it what I expected? Not at all. Am I the demographic this was written for? Probably not, I guess it's for younger people who are more into romance and magic. I'm not really a romance fan but I can appreciate a well write love story. This one felt like I should just believe they were in love because the author told me. I never really rooted for or felt with them, it was quite odd. And with how surreal it got, I just lost touch at some point. All in all, if you're into a slightly over the top, definitely surreal, magical, romance story this might be for you. It's a light read and doesn't really ask much of you. I personally sadly can't give it a very high rating, as I just wanted to get it done for the last like three fourths of the book. It's definitely an interesting premise and something I haven't seen before. Glad I can leave this on a slightly more positive note now.

I am left entirely speechless by this book. Spoken from myself barely a book left me in tears or made me shiver and I'm by all means no person of love stories and yet I had to read this one because of Carrie and it touched things only very less books have ever made me feel. Very less books made me cry and shiver at the same time - and yet this one did it. Carrie does not only write such an extraordinary story with turns you wouldn't have expected to happen she also shows a diversity in her characters drawing the attention to groups of people that are barely shown in fictional media. She makes even the silliest and stupiest things that could never be possible sound real, sound logical and cute. The book leaves you thinking about your wn future and thinking about what just happened there and after every senctence you want to know what happens next to Evie and her world. A seriously brilliant book and I can't wait to read more from her!

I liked the writing style of this book because I expected it to be worse, considering the fact that this is her first novel. The story itself was extraordinary for me, since I’ve never read anything like this before. But I wondered when exactly the book takes place? It confused me so much. Also, the sexualities of the secondary characters felt forced. Some scenes were a bit too much for example the moment she literally ripped her heart out , which is the reason I only give three stars. The ending was nice but the story still didn’t manage it to captivate me.

Reading this felt a lot like reading 'All My Friends Are Superheros' (which I didn't really like)... Maybe I don't have enough imagination for this kind of fiction but it felt like a lot of nonsense... SORRY CARRIE I LOVE YOU