1.5 stars. (FYI...I RARELY rate below a 2.5.) In all honesty, this should have been a DNF, but I just couldn't let it beat me.

Analogy time. In undergrad, I did a psychology independent study in which I simply had to do research on a chosen topic and write a term paper. Per usual student actions, I procrastinated the CRAP out of that project. Sure...I gathered some research here and there and had random articles scattered about my dorm room, but the writing of this paper 100% took place in the last 4 days before it was due. My method for construction was primarily to grab quotes I found interesting and "meaningful" and then wrap my narrative around them. It really read like a giant rambling sentence weaving around a few things that made sense.

This is how reading this book felt. It was 100% not for me. It was too much grasping for an assumed truth and a whole lot of rambling. Like my term paper, it had a few moments of clarity and things that I thought were actually good takeaways, but then I was plummeted back into the abyss. Sure, it got published...but hey...I also got an A+ on my paper. Sometimes weird things happen.

To enjoy this book I think you have to be WAY more open-minded than me and take the author's assumptions about the soul as fact. I couldn't do that. I guess I'm not enough of a multisensory person and I'm stuck in my five-senses analytical scientific way of looking at things, but there was just too much reaching. I'm all for being spiritual and having a feeling of there being something greater, but there was a lot of assumption thrown in here that came completely out of left field. Also...the fact that he states that all humans have their own soul, but that animals are only parts of collective souls really pissed me off. Sorry. My dog isn't a freaking genius, but if there are souls, then he certainly has his own. He's not just some tidbit of the greater "dog" consciousness. Nope. I can't jive with that theory.

Thank goodness this one was borrowed from the library.