Confessions of a fallen angel - Ronan O'Brien

This is a book I couldn't put down, right from page one. I was told it read a bit like Roddy Doyle. But with Roddy Doyle he shares only the use of the Irish accent and the fact that the story is set in the north side of Dublin, typically the poorer, working class, bronx-like part of the town. This is not an account of a daily normal life as in many of Roddy Doyle's novels. It's the very tragic story of a man with a curse, which make him see the imminent deaths of the people close to him, through recurring nightmares.

The story begins when the character is 10 years old. He likes to play football and to swim in the canal with his best friends, but a close encounter with death during a football game changes his life forever. He doesn't die that time, but his foretelling "gift" that is given to him during that experience, is going to haunt him for the rest of his days.
Though sad and heart-breaking, this book is also incredibly funny, thanks to the Irish humour sprinkled throughout its pages. One of my favourite lines is when the guy has his second nearly deadly experience, and his dead friend tells him that "Time doesn't mean nothin up here. It's like a Dublin Bus timetable". So true.

And although you know that the tragedy is only waiting to happen, you still want to keep reading, hoping and praying that something will change, that the man won't meet his fate, not this time.
You'll have to fight your tears back if you don't like crying. And you will keep reading just because it's a damn good story.
I usually don't go for sappy, melodramatic books, and actually this one isn't. But I do love good romantic stories. And this is one has the most moving and sweetest romance I've read in a long time. It's about one soul that reunites in two bodies, the perfect couple, the true love, the one that would really last forever. If only fate didn't play with it.

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