Evie Snow has lived a long and relatively happy life but now she is dead, she's suddenly faced with a door that won't open. Evie realised that her three biggest secrets are holding her back from entering her own heaven and she now has to face them and share her biggest, and secret, love story with the people in her life.

This is a super sweet idea and really love the image of people being faced with their doors when they enter the afterlife. There were some lovely phrases and a beautiful hint of magical realism now and again that reminded me a little bit of Once Upon a Time/ Fairytale land - the bird that was the notebook, the opening doors of Evie's chest, the tree. I enjoyed the story for what it was which a sweet romance but there was nothing spectacular about the book that blew me out of the water.

I felt like a lot of Evie's personality was lying heavily on that she seemed to be pretty much a carbon copy of Carrie (blonde, curly hair, chocolate brown eyes, not fat but not thin either, loves to doodle and has a huge sweet tooth) and that Vincent had a lot of Pete in him too (scraggy dark hair, green eyes, musical, tall and a bit oafish). Now in saying that, I know that people who don't know Carrie or Pete wouldn't be able to see this obviously so to back up what I mean is that Evie felt that tiny bit flat. I feel like I was being told how great she was all the time by these other characters. How she was super kind, and a bit bonkers and all sorts of things yet I never actually saw Evie do anything to back these claims up. I kept being told about Evie without actually seeing anything. All I could see was an adult woman letting her mother control every bit of her life, and who in the end had zero backbone.

While a lot of story flew nicely, there were some bits that were a bit hard to take. Sometimes I felt like phrases ran away with themselves but I think this is just a thing of it being Carrie's first fiction book. I think stuff like this will be ironed out over the next couple of books she writes (I've no doubt she can, and will, write another book). For example, this line just didn't do it for. There was too much of it, I think:

"He was a giant who had caught a butterfly and knew he'd only kill it if he kept it but was so reluctant to let it go for its beauty made him something he wouldn't be without it: happy"

I also couldn't quite stomach this one:

"You're like...that single firework that makes everyone gasp in a display that would otherwise have been quite disappointing."

Vincent and Evie were a bit childish considering they were 27 years old. As was Jim. Because of the way Evie and Jim acted in particular, I just had no respect for them. I don't think you can for people who let other people bully them their entire lives and never break out of the box. I think Evie had good reasons in the end, but I still don't think she should have done what she had done. In the end, I felt sad about the whole story because, despite reaching the 'other side', Evie, Jim and Vincent led half-full lives in my opinion. How could Jim be with someone who could never truly love him? How could they have children together? I dunno.

Also, just a small thing but at the start it really annoyed me that no-one had regular Joe surnames - Winters, Summer, Snow, Frost and there was even a Pear at one point, Mr Pear?? I think by the end I could tie all that in with the magical realism theme and go with it, but it bugged me for a while. The time period was also very confusing - Evie's family acted like it was the 20s, or 30s, but Vincent wore skinny jeans and Eddie had a phone. But Evie worked in an office full of men where apparently it was okay to slap her on the ass all the time like Mad Men or something? It confused me a lot until eventually I had to forget it and move on with the story.