Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. Unfortunately it’s not the book for me. DNF @ 10%.

The concept of this book was so cool, very interesting to see what happened with each psychic. The book did get boring after a while because it read more like a textbook than entertainment.

This book is mind-blowing, or should I say mind-expanding, or better yet, conscious-expanding. I have never considered much about the truth of mediums, although I do believe in life after death. This book helped to convince me that at least some mediums are for real, but it taught me many, many more things than that. It explained what mediums have come to understand about the afterlife, how it works as they have perceived. The consistency between their understandings, the beliefs of many religions, and near-death experiences is astonishingly in tune and very convincing to me. It is a picture that I will always carry with me as I seek to understand it more, and it fills me with incredible hope and blessed assurance. I would add that the life stories of the mediums and how they became aware of their abilities are also fascinating.

A really absorbing book which looks into the possibility of life after death, whether one’s soul or essence survives death. I find the subject extremely fascinating and the author has written an intriguing book on the subject. Highly recommended for anyone who has questions on this topic.
My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for my honest review.

Stephane Allix's book "The Test" was riveting. I have a strong interest in the afterlife and I couldn't put this book down. His recollections of meeting with different psychic mediums were fascinating. As we follow the author's very personal journey to see if his test does, indeed, prove communication with the afterlife, the reader is at the edge of her seat. There is much more to this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in the afterlife, psychic mediums, and the grief of losing a beloved parent.

I can't fault Stéphane's honesty throughout. As a reader, he provides us with facts of what he's gone through and then leaves us to decide whether we believe or not, rather than THIS IS REAL BECAUSE etc. Not a single one of the mediums got every single item he put in his father's casket, yet he was honest about this. I definitely believe in mediums, especially the ones in this book, but that's purely my own decision from what I've read here. I feel like I've come out of sharing such an insightful and unique experience with this author.

What happens when we die. What happens to our loved ones when they die. Does the ego, our consciousness survive death.

Most people try, perhaps rightly, to forget about these questions as they get on with the business of living. The shock of bereavement, however, can change all that, especially if the bereavement was untimely. Finding closure can be difficult. This is where the medium comes in.

Just finding closure after the loss of his father, however, was not enough for this particular individual. He wanted more objective proof that the dead can communicate with us. Accordingly he put five items of sentimental value into her father's casket after his death and asked his deceased loved one to tell her what these items were when he went to see the mediums.

He then went to visit several mediums, all of whom he portrays with great respect and understanding.

Does he get the proof that he requires? Well, the reader will have to judge that for themselves, but it is certainly made clear that communicating with loved ones beyond the graves is not as simple as he supposed. The details of how the mediums work is fascinating in its way, but it certainly does not work in the left-brained way we might imagine. Rather, the medium filters feelings, impressions, images.

There also did seem to be a certain justice in that. This writer does make it clear that this approach to the seances puts undue stress on those he chose to participate in this experiment. Others who read this may well also decide, perhaps with some justification, that there is something rather distasteful in this approach, almost Faustian. Something's may be better left unproven.

The other side of the argument might be that in this day and age, it is perhaps time to move away from the nihilism implicit on the Western materialistic approach to life, if all it fosters is the kind of self-centred myopia that sees life only in terms of acquisition and the control of natural resources.

Theories, such as that whatever the medium gleans from a client is just down to cold-reading, or looking at body language and other subtle clues, are discounted: there have been other experiments where the mediums do not even meet the client. One medium, Dominique, insists the only input she expects from her clients are yes-no answers. The other question looked at is whether or not some kind of telepathy is involved - the answer being here that the spirits can have a way of interrupting the medium in mid-sentence for example - in other words, they do talk back.

Not much detail is given on where the spirits actually are when they pass on, though it is made clear that they too are moving on to still better places within the Beyond - and in fact, where an attachment to the living g remains in place, this can actually impede the process of both.

The words of a psychiatrist at the end also make it clear that consulting a medium is no magic bullet to the necessary process of grieving, once a loved one has passed on. The living need to move on with their lives without the loved one still, and those crossed over still have their path to follow. The psychiatrist also points out that whatever messages received, may depend to some extent on the quality of the medium's ability to mediate too: there is always an element of subjectivity now. This also adds something to the telepathy argument to my mind, incidentally: we may all be part of one another to some degree.

The views of one medium, Loan, on schizophrenia are interesting - she sees this disease almost as one of possession.

One medium seemed to preach a little bit on differentiating between the personality of a loved one and their essence, on others that the consciousness of one life becomes absorbed within a larger, mass conciousness. Overall, I always enjoy it when a more 'scientific' approach is taken to subjects such as these - these allow the reader to makes their own minds up and there is less of an attempt to proselytise.

This is so badly edited you can't even read it. The mess of words on a kindle device is unreadable and nothing is legible as sentences break off half way and start again with huge gaps. Very disappointed.