The premise of the book is great and the author really delivers. Great read. Highly recommended. .

The book did not really work for me. I DNF'ed it. I wasn’t able to connect with any of the many characters in the book and I found myself putting down the book a lot because it was never really catching my attention.

I find Billy Coffey being one of the finest writers in the realm of Christian fiction - and in the realm of fiction. He can portray values and conflicts perfectly - and he is a very gifted storyteller with enormous sensitivity for the moves of the human hearts and lives. And he is definitely not for a common reader (I´d say that the predisposition to be Coffey´s reader is willingness to listen and to seek, and to see outside of the one´s box (better be it a conventional Christian box, too!)).

This novel is about a special kind of purgatory. One you stay within unless you are willing to love more. And some unconventional purgatory it is - the one day lived again and again. Safe haven for the ones, a dream come true for the others, a very special kind of hell to the different others. Enter local drunk Bobby - who still might have a chance. All of them still have a chance. But the change (even the understanding of the need and value and price of change) is so, so hard.

Be it my testament of my love of Mr Coffey´s novels to say that I find this being his weakest book in my personal opinion and I am still going for 4 stars here! Because this is one hard, enormously long food for thought. A bit repetitive, a bit boring, a whole lot of heaviness to read. I was fighting this novel for quite a long time! And while I would love more action and less of unfinished endings and more happy endings maybe - yet I understand the idea of lonely personal purgatory very much. Billy Coffey can look deeply into a soul tired of living, full of resignation and of all kinds of distorted forms of love - and find a grace and beauty and hope there. And hope, this precious currency in our times; and love, so simple and yet so difficult thing to really do; can truly save us and free us.

I am continuing to fight this novel in my head. I am trying to find the hope, too. All in all, good :)

This is my first 2 star review of 2019 and part of me was expecting to not give one this year given the books I’ve been reading. Sadly, it isn’t to be.
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“There will be stars” is not what I expected based on Coffey’s previous work, “In the heart of the dark wood”. Where “dark wood” had a tight narrative flow, “stars” felt aimless and was far from convincing. It’s hard to work out if the character are dead or not; or are they in purgatory or are they in a coma in hospital. This isn’t a series of questions that can be ignored because without some clear indication of what the answer is, nothing makes sense.
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This is a short story at best. There’s SO MUCH repetition it becomes ridiculous. Other novels have handled the idea of days repeating endlessly and they’ve all managed it so much better. If all the repeats were removed we as readers would have a far superior text. It would be fast and powerful instead of turgid and dull. The same goes for the dialogue.
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I have more Coffey novels to review but in all honesty, after this one, I’m not looking forward to them.

I really couldn't get into There Will Be Stars. I wanted to like it, but I hate it when novels jump around through perspectives.

This was possibly one of the weirdest books I've ever read in my life....but somehow in a positive way? I found myself enthralled by all of the possibilities that this book offered, and by the way it ended.