#BlogTour Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey

 It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey.

About the Author

Catriona Silvey was born in Glasgow and grew up in Perthshire and Derbyshire, which left her with a strange accent and a distrust of flat places. She overcame the latter to do a BA in English at Cambridge, and spent the next few years there working in scientific publishing. After that she did a PhD in language evolution, in the hope of finding out where all these words came from in the first place.

Following stints in Edinburgh and Chicago, she returned to Cambridge, where she lives with her husband and a very peculiar cat. When she’s not working as a researcher studying meaning in language, she writes. Her short stories have been performed at the Edinburgh Literary Festival and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Follow @silveycat on Twitter, Visit catrionasilvey.com

About the book

Thora and Santi have met before… Under the clocktower in central Cologne, with nothing but the stars above and their futures ahead.

They will meet again… They don’t know it yet, but they’ll meet again: in numerous lives they will become friends, colleagues, lovers, enemies – meeting over and over for the first time, every time; each coming to know every version of the other.

But as they’re endlessly drawn together and the lines between their different lives begin to blur, they are faced with one question: why? They must discover the truth of their strange attachment before this, and all their lives, are lost forever. 

Review

What's interesting is the fact both Santi and Thora give themselves and readers the connection and the same clue in every scenario that eventually leads to the solution and conclusion of this story. Not necessarily one you filter out, perhaps because it becomes one of the features on a loop, which makes  the two characters identifiable to each other and to us.

The inter-personal relationships change, the power structure and the hierarchy between the two of them. One of the constants is the place, Cologne, which is woven cleverly into the fabric of each loop. Are they loops though or are they glimpses of parallel timelines, reincarnations or jumps in time. Are Santi and Thora trapped in a ever repeating cycle where one of them knows what the inevitable conclusion is and the other is determined to try over and over again.

What sets this apart from other books with a similar premise is the way Silvey creates this visceral connection to the place, much like historical fiction, and the speculative nature of their meetings, all of which culminates in a fascinating ending.

I enjoyed the way the two characters are fused together like soulmates who are destined to repeat the same unfulfilling ending, and yet at the same time are on two different paths. One believes every path is set in stone by a higher power and the other believes the opposite, and yet in a bizarre way Thora also acts as if everything is preordained.

It's a fascinating and often emotional read, and one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.

Buy Meet Me in Another Life at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Harper Voyager pub date 8th July 2021 | Hardback | Ebook | Audio | £14.99. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at catrionasilvey.com/books