Book Review: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

1,5 stars (it was okay) for The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

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Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination, but an answer. 

In heaven, five people explain your life to you. Some you knew, others may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie's five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his "meaningless" life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: "Why was I here?"

Source: Goodreads

Sometimes you read a book and even though it reads in a fluent way and reads quite decent, it fails to captivate you and pull you in. The five people you meet in heaven is a book like that for me.
This kind is the most confusing book relationship you can have.

I never felt reluctant to go back to this book, in fact I didn't mind reading it but somewhere something still went wrong. It couldn't convince me in the slightest, I kept waiting for that moment in the book where I would think 'this will stick with me'. Maybe it was wrong of me to expect something mind-blowing; some kind of uplifting life lesson that I would remember forever. Something that would alter my views. I guess I shouldn't have expected it but could I really be blamed with a title like this?

I liked Mitch Albom's idea of heaven but when eventually everything fell in place, I still felt disconnected from the entire book.
In the book Albom brings his main character in a heaven where there isn't such a thing like winged men playing on harps (but seriously who would expect this? I personally expect a full on banquet with lots and lots of chocolate cake). Albom's character Eddie meets 5 people in heaven who he (in)directly came in contact with and who had an influence on his life and he on theirs. But it's an influence that went unnoticed by Eddie at the moment and it is why those five people are there to meet him.
They explain to him what effect Eddie has had on matters in life Eddie never would've thought twice about.
In doing so they explain to him his importance on earth and why he, too, was important. Even if Eddie himself never thought he was.

I'm not sure why I didn't fall for this book because it sounds great in concept. I just felt that an opportunity was missed, that more could've been done with it. And maybe it's the subtle and humble way in which this book was written that didn't catch on with me.

Maybe at a different time, in a different place, and a different mind set, this book could've blown my mind. But not right now.