Book Review: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

About:
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin is a novel telling of a family whose children know the date of their death. This is the second novel of Ms. Benjamin, an award winning writer.

• 352 pages
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons (January 9, 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735213186

My rating for The Immortalists – 4
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More Books by Chloe Benjamin

Thoughts:
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin is a novel with an intriguing premise: how, or if, your life would change if you knew the day of your death? I’m sure many people have asked themselves that question, the decisions you would, or would not make, are mind boggling. In several countries I’ve been in, this is how people live, they don’t plan for the long term, believing they won’t live to see their plans pan out anyway.

 Some of the narrative caught me by surprise, but some was very predictable – I would say about half and half. I did find the unasked questions the novel implies to be very interesting.
Would your death be a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Would it be your destiny which you can do nothing about?
Do you go out of your way to fulfill the prophecy?
Is our death dater written? Can it be changed?
And many other questions which are not answered, but makes the reader think and challenge themselves.

The plot of the story works, but loses its track every once in a while, but the characters save the novel. I kept reading wanting to know what would happen to them, what will be their challenges and how they would overcome them, if at all.

This is not a perfect novel (does such a thing even exists?), but it is a captivating one which will keep you reading. It is a well written story, you don’t have to believe in the premise to enjoy the novel.

Synopsis:
A mystical woman has arrived in New York City, 1969, that is known for being able to foretell the date of one’s death. Four young siblings, two brothers and two sisters, of the Gold family pool their savings together and go visit the mystic.

From then on, the children’s lives have changed, each one keeping the date of their death in their minds, or with a preferred sibling.

Buy The Immortalists from Amazon.com*
More Books by Chloe Benjamin

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free.
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account