The Truth Inside is a powerful story of bereavement and how a mother finds purpose through afterlife communication.

In July 2014, Ali Norell's daughter, Romy, died aged four months. As a spiritual medium, Ali found her belief system to be challenged in the strongest way possible. This story documents how Ali received communication from her daughter in Spirit in a variety of ways and how this eventually helped her to process her grief and uncover her own life purpose.

Invoking and heartwrenching this is definitely a must-read.

The Truth Inside: Lessons from My Daughter in the Afterlife by Ali Norrell
Book Review by Dawn Thomas

248 Pages
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing / O-Books
Release Date: May 31, 2019

Reincarnation, Psychic, Mediums, Spiritualism

The book is written in the first-person point of view. The author tells the story of the short life of her daughter. She talks about conscious conception and how the soul of the child can decide to join a family. She discusses the grief she still deals with four years after the death of her child. I could not imagine how she and the family dealt with the emotional fallout from the death. I found comfort in her words and loved the prompts at the end of each chapter.

I started this book and couldn’t stop until I finished it. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the afterlife, reincarnation or mediumship.

Three and a half star rating.
How does anyone cope when they lose a baby unexpectedly? It certainly helps if you are a Spiritualist or have leanings that way. A very honest and heart rending account of what happened on 17th/18th July 2014 and how the family are coming to terms with it. This is also a mini biography of the author too. Very sad, but interesting at the same time and definitely makes me want to read more about Spiritualism.

I feel that I was meant to read this book which details, amongst other things Ali Norell's spiritual journey following the death of her 4 month old baby from an aneurysm in 2014. I last a child at 4 months and in 2014 we lost my niece to a brain aneurysm just 6 weeks after her wedding so I guess you can see where I am coming from. For these reasons my review will of course be very personal.

I find it both distressing and cathartic to read and spent a lot of time trying to read through my tears. This was because of empathy with the author and feelings of deep guilt. I was very young (in my 20's) when my son died and no-one, not even my parents or husband were willing to engage in any conversation around his death once the funeral was over. The author was a lot older, more mature and had already had spiritual experiences prior to her loss whilst I came to spiritualism because of my loss.

I found that everything I read was a truth to me and validated my belief in a life after death. The book is very well written in a very humble and accessible manner. If you have suffered the loss of a loved one, especially a child and you have an open mind or even an interest in life after death then I feel you would get enormous comfort from reading The Truth Inside. If you are finding your way around spiritualism or just have a passing interest then again I think that this is a book for you.

Thank you Ali Norell for committing your experience and your thoughts to paper so that they might beof help to others and thanks also to the publishers for having faith in her.

What happens when we die? Is that just it, or do we go on? My personal belief is that our consciousness goes on. Perhaps you are unsure, or have your own strong belief. No parent should outlive their children. Unfortunately it doesn't always work that way. Ali Norell and her husband lose their baby daughter Romy. As a medium Ali has been in touch with the spirit side from a young age. Even with that knowledge it doesn't make her grief any easier. When Ali describes her daughters passing, get the tissues its incredibly moving. The visitations she has with her daughter and loved ones. Will be a comfort to anyone mourning a loss. Highly recommended read. ARC requested from Net Galley . This is my voluntary review. Thank you Ali Norell for sharing your life with us.

This is a true account of how a woman found the strength to move on after her baby girl's death. It is written in such a raw manner that it is easy to feel the pain of the author. All people grieve in different ways and the author's honest account of her journey was inspiring to read.

This is the true story of Ali Norell and her baby Roma, who passed away aged just 4 months old. This review could so easily be about weeping and wailing, and whilst it was incredibly moving, the object of the book is to relate Ali’s experience of receiving communication from Romy after her passing.

Since early childhood, Ali has been able to see, hear, and sense the spirits of those who have passed, but I doubt that anything could have prepared Ali and her husband Darius for what was to come, it challenged their beliefs in the way only the loss of a child could do.

Ali’s story includes a minute by minute account of Romy’s last hours on earth ( something which must have been extremely difficult for her to do, given that it means she has to re-live every moment) and it makes for an incredibly moving read. However, on a more positive note, it also includes a truly uplifting spiritual experience for Ali too!

The section of the book that tells of the traumatic day that baby Roma was taken ill, also involves an encounter with a stranger in a cafe - and I do wish that Ali had returned to the cafe at a later date to ask the owner about the exotic looking redhead (and if you read the book you’ll know exactly how I feel, and why!)


Ali not only receives communication from Romy, but she also has visions of her too, and in each appearance Romy seemed to be the age that she would have been had she lived, but what I don’t understand is this - Romy was thought to be an ‘old soul ‘ so why was she ‘growing up’ in the spirit world? ( this isn’t a criticism, it’s a genuine case of ‘I don’t understand’) My understanding would be that as an old soul there wouldn’t be the need to grow up in spirit.

How you react to this book will naturally depend on your own spiritual beliefs, but it’s an inspiration to witness how a deep and suffocating grief was transformed, when Ali realised that this was something that she had to experience to discover her true purpose in life.

Just a couple of criticisms - firstly I found the narrative a little repetitive, and secondly, there were exercises at the end of each chapter that enabled the reader to explore their own thoughts and feelings, and I’m not sure this was entirely necessary - but you know something? I like Ali Norell. She and Darius are such caring and loving parents to their 3 living children, and I believe that Romy was a lucky baby to have parents such as these two, albeit for only 4 short months, and equally THEY were lucky to have this beautiful baby girl too. It turns out they had much to learn from her!

The loss of a child is surely one of the most traumatic experiences anyone could ever undergo. This book charts the story of a woman whose baby died suddenly and inexplicably, at just four months.Most young parents would find it very difficult to deal with s loss of this magnitude, perhaps sinking into a depression that may last a lifetime. Neither does a marriage survive the loss of a son or daughter, in many cases.
Ali Norell, however, has the innate ability to talk to dead people. She purports to have inheritrd psychic abilities since being a child. All of this, also means that for her, death is not necessarily as final as it may be for many.
However it becomes clear that sensing that there may be more beyond the grave does not make it any easier reconcile. The contrast between the two realities still opens up like a chasm: Ali variously experiences joy as her daughter is met on the on the other side. Then there is the emptiness of looking at the remains of her baby. The ensuing depression still has to be endured rather than circumvented and Ali is compelled to seek the guidance of several other mediums as part of her path to closure.
Nevertheless, Ali doeson time re-emerge from her dark tunnel and begins once more to engage fully on life one more, with the support of her husband. The overriding message of this book, however, is that her gifts have msde it possible for her to engage in life fully again and possessing this kind of awareness, ultimately do confer the inner resilience to move beyond grief, rather than remaining trapped in a destructive cycle of pathological grief. Some readers of this book may be put off by what may sound like a blind faith in portents and signs. Nevertheless, this writer manages to avoid being either too preachy or excessively New Agey about the whole matter: this is worth reading with an open mind.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
I did have a hard time reading this book for many reasons. My heart broke for Ali. I'm a mother of two and I know this is my biggest fear. I like her, would probably lose my faith as well, but this begins to go a little overboard for me. It seemed that this was more about developing spiritual skills.

Beautifully written book about how death is not the end and even in the worse circumstances after loosing a child a family can rebuild with the knowledge that their loved one has not gone away.

This is the true story of Ali who loses her baby daughter at 4 months old. She tells us how the experience affected her. As a mother myself I cannot begin to imagine everything she went through. It talks about how she lost her faith in her spiritual journey. She talks a lot about spiritual things within this book and if you are not a spiritual person some of her ideas are a bit out there. She also has exercises at the end of each chapter to explore your own thoughts and feelings. At first I liked this but I soon grew tired of it and these exercises should have been saved for a book developing your spiritual skills.

The Truth Inside: Lessons from My Daughter in the Afterlife by Ali Norell. Ebook edition. (Paperback, 248 pages). Expected Publication: 01 June 2019 by O Books. 5 Stars.

An authentic view of a mother’s journey from loss to healing in the face of losing a child and the trauma of its aftermath. Both heartbreaking and inspiring, raw with emotional honesty, this book adeptly defogs grief to find the path of the soul seeker, entering a true doorway into the deeper realities of the universe.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing this ebook for review.

This was a very beautifully written, emotional, and informative book written by an author who lost a child at a very early age. She explains how she learned we all belong to soul groups and pre-write our own lives before we are born into our physical bodies, using life challenges as a learning lesson, and how others you are connected with will still reach out to you in death. You don’t need to be a grieving parent to get something out of this book. Anyone interested in spirit guides and/or reincarnation/past lives, dealing with a loss of any loved ones, or dealing with challenges in their lives and not understanding why things are happening the way they are will come out of this with a better understanding and maybe even some hope or motivation that will things will improve for the better. Even if you don’t believe what the author does, it’s still a very touching personal story of her loss and how she dealt with it.