What do readers think of Proof of Heaven by Mary Curran Hackett? Write your own review.

Proof of Heaven is a story about a single mother whose strong Catholic faith pushes her to search for a solution or miracle to save her terminally ill son. Colm, "pronounced Col-um", is the wonderful little boy who knows he may die soon and desperately wants to meet his absent father. Through their quests, along with the support of his uncle and doctor, they come to know love, peace and acceptance.
While I had some problems with this book; i.e, Colm's wisdom and maturity at such a young age, and his mother's sometimes obstinacy, this was a lovely, sad but uplifting story.

I found this book disturbing on many levels. I did not believe that a young child would have that much insight into God and heaven and wanted to shake the mother and say wake up, your son is DYING. I found it creepy that the author named the main character after her son which she says is her favorite boy's name. The relationships were predictable and I found the use of the Catholic Church to justify the mother's unwavering belief in miracles overused. The author's comments at the end of the book were interesting and helped explain why she wrote this book. I would not recommend it to my book groups.

This book addresses near death experience and life after death, which could be interesting topics. However, the immature and weak characters in this book killed it. The dialogue is childish and contrived and the characters are so self centered and needy, I did not enjoy reading it.

I simply did not like this book. No character development, no allowing the reader to arrive at their own conclusions. Contrived and overly dramatic. The mother was so self-absorbed that I wanted to quit reading midway through. I pushed on but was glad when the last page was finished. I did like the author's bio and finally understood where she got the idea to write this book, but it was too little, too late.

While the premise of this book had promise, the family drama of a young, sick boy and his emotionally shattered mother, it just never resonated with me. The characters just struck me as one dimensional. The author clearly had affection for her characters but was not able to develop them to the point where they were more than predictable and, at times, actually annoying to me. I read to the end but already knew how it would end long before I got there. I would like to say it is at least a good easy, summer read but I am sorry to say I was relieved to finally arrive at the last page.

I really didn't like this book. It was overly sentimental and didn't follow the cardinal rule of good writing, show.... don't tell. By laboriously explaining every thought and motivation of each character, it made the book dull and doesn't involve the reader in the process of discovery. The dialogue often felt stilted and very unrealistic. I would have given it one star, but the afterward showed how close the book was to the author's own life and that was the most interesting part of the book.