The First Phone Call from Heaven revolves around some “chosen” people who received a special call from their dead loved ones. The grieving single father Sully is determined to find out if the whole thing is a miracle or a massive hoax.
Rating: 4/5 (Click for rating system)
Other famous books by Mitch Albom: Tuesdays with Morrie, The Time Keeper,The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Tuesdays with Morrie was the first book I read from Mitch Albom’s writing, it was full of lie lessons despite being a little serious. When this book came out, I wanted to read it immediately because I was rooting for Albom’s POV on life lessons. A year later, I was able to ask my mom to buy it for me but I never got the motivation to continue reading it till a few days ago. Reasons below.
Full Review (no spoilers)
The story revolved around a certain miraculous phone call in the small town of Coldwaters, Michigan with a few relatable inserts of Alexander Graham Bell and the history of telephone here and there.
The first few pages were amazing because we all want know what’s up. But once I got the grasp of what was happening – the phone calls, it just got dead boring to me as everything felt too repetitive going around the already-obvious situation of the phone calls. I wanted to just drop the book and move on to my next one. That was the reason I wasn’t able to finish reading it the first time I tried so I had to start all over again.
I’ll give him the credit of the story being original. Yet I won’t disregard the fact that the only reason I put up with finishing the book was just to know whether the calls were real or fake. I had to contemplate just skipping to the last part honestly and I only read through because in about a third of the book started to show little points of hype though nothing too intense. What made finishing the bland story a little easier was Albom’s eloquent writing. He was also easily able to paint me a picture with using only a few words which made the boringness seem a little less yawning.
I was only able to not stop reading about the last 1/5th of the book when the story was getting a little exciting. But I hate the fact that there were lots of dead and flat moments in the book which could have been utilized better. I don’t think if you read through the first 20 pages and jump to page 250 won’t make you feel like you missed too much. And most unforntunately, Mitch Albom decided to squeeze in some important details to just 4 pages. IMO, there were so much more that needs explaining and that 4 pages seem a little less significant than they should be.
There was also no reason to love any of the characters since they weren’t showing much of anything other than thinking of what to feel about the calls. You know how when you read through John Green’s The Fault in Our Starts and you know you just gotta love Gus, this wasn’t the same case, very far even. Despite the 300-page novel, there was no to little character development even while there were only a few characters to really follow.
At the third of the book I wanted to leave it at 3 stars and move on to my next book, but half-way through it went up to 3.5. The only reason I’m giving this book a 4 was the last part of story, the unveiling of what’s happening, I just can’t put it down. And even with that, I feel like I’m cheating myself since these reviews are for the book, not for the endings.
What we also expect of Mitch Albom injection of life lessons in his works wasn’t too evident. The only thing I appreciated that is related to how I first new him through Tuesdays with Morrie were found at the last few pages.
I have a few more Albom’s works lying around waiting to be read and I really hope it won’t bore me like this one did.
Life and Lemons 