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A Thousand Rooms Kindle Edition
‘Part philosophy, part speculative fiction, part romance, this is intelligent commercial women’s fiction at its best.’ Amazon reviewer
‘You don’t wake up expecting to die.’
Katie, thirty-two, is living a pretty good life.
She has a good job, her own flat, and a fabulous pair of new red shoes. Sure, she hasn’t had a boyfriend for a while, but she figures she still has time.
Until time is taken away.
Hit by a car while crossing the street, suddenly-dead Katie is alone. No angels, no loved ones, no bright lights appear. Katie is a lost soul, wandering the streets of Sydney, trying to figure out what she’s supposed to do next. But Heaven, or wherever she’s supposed to be, eludes her.
A Thousand Rooms looks at life, love, death, and the idea that Heaven is as individual as we are, taking the reader on an uplifting, bittersweet journey that examines what it means to be alive.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 19, 2016
- File size1594 KB
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B01MDP0TX9
- Publication date : October 19, 2016
- Language : English
- File size : 1594 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 228 pages
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Helen Jones is a prize-winning author of six novels, writing for middle-grade, young adult and adult audiences. She's been published in magazines and anthologies, written for the Writers & Artists website and The Guardian, and created regular content for a variety of businesses and publications in Australia and the UK.
Born in the UK, Helen has since lived in both Australia and Canada. A few years ago she returned to her native England where, when she’s not writing stories, she likes to hunt for vintage treasures, explore stone circles and watch the sky change colour. She now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband, daughter, and wonderfully chaotic cockapoo.
Customer reviews
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Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2017
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Top reviews from the United States
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"If I died tomorrow, would anyone care?"
In A Thousand Rooms, Helen Jones explores just who cares after a young woman's head-on departure from a high-pressure world. Katie works in an Australian ad agency, tiptoeing on thumbtacks to appease her overbearing boss, Darryl. She's bruised from unsavory dating experiences, primarily with a coworker named Jeremy. Jones, author of the Journey to Ambeth series, tosses laughter into an ocean of jellyfish stings. With grammatical command and physical description, Jones gives relatable, cringeworthy scenarios some light. If anything, there are very few instances of obscurity in the novel, while readers are welcome to flesh out the story with their own milestones and follies. Jones writes:
"There was a bit of a crowd around the bar and, as they parted to let us through, I saw a redhead leaning against it, talking to someone, a glass of wine in her hand. She had gorgeous hair, long and curly, and a nice figure. She was wearing jeans and a strappy top, just like me, but hers were more expensive. Still, I was with Jeremy. I turned to him and saw his face sort of, light up. The frown went and at that moment, the redhead turned and saw him. Her eyebrows went way up as she noticed me, then she was all smiles, though I could tell she was checking me out. We reached the bar and Jeremy, finally, introduced me to someone. To her."
Ah, that unflattering awkwardness, illuminated in thoughtful prose. Jones writes with magical realism, and a respect for the diversity in human experience. We see this in the different versions of Heaven presented, and Katie's roundabout journey towards her own ethereal paradise—the pair of red shoes that finally fit. While not explicitly mentioned, the novel, in its colourful youthfulness, sparks thoughts of The Wizard of Oz, Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and one's being otherworldly, and The Princess Bride's Wesley. Jones writes a playful, yet achingly tasteful story, as readers may discover upon meeting the ever-obliging Jason.
While A Thousand Rooms fills the mind with much to discuss and reminisce upon, I do wish Jones had chosen to elaborate more on the past life experiences of the people Katie encounters. Delving further into the lives of Katie's antagonists (such as Darryl), may have added further profundity, though the story is already packed with diverse perspectives.
A Thousand Rooms completes itself with wizened contentment, an impressive feat given the protagonist's youth. The storyline quivers with humor and a work environment that reminds me of Toby Young's How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, while conversational insightfulness rings of spiritual resolution Mitch Albom offers in The Five People You Meet In Heaven. Outwardly, the novel is light, though the relationships depicted present a world and an afterlife of multidimensional possibility, where predestination and free will engage in a dance of shifting rhythms.
Jones writes beautifully. Descriptions are rich, and the characters, even those on the periphery, are wonderfully developed. As the main character, Katie is thoroughly relatable with a wide range of emotions including some delightful sarcasm. I found her personal evolution compelling as her earthly concerns slip away and she discovers the essence of who she is and the point of her journey. Katie's realization of what it means to live a blessed life is uplifting and full of hope. Highly recommended for readers who love character-driven books and want to feel inspired.
Top reviews from other countries

Her afterlife, though, is only just beginning.
A Thousand Rooms is a tragic, funny, bittersweet tale of what happens when no-one is expecting you to die, least of all yourself. It is a story about how to navigate your way through the great hereafter when there are no convenient angels there to guide you. Clad in the dress and the shoes she died in, Katie has to deal with the fact that there is no direct stairway to heaven, and that coming to terms with your own death when you feel very much alive is, to be honest, a harrowing experience.
Helen Jones has written a masterful and emotional novel in A Thousand Rooms. There were several scenes when I found myself laughing and crying as Katie tries to navigate her way through the afterlife. Jones doesn’t shy away from confronting the very real effects of grief, describing in sensitive and emotional terms the after effects of Katie’s death on those who love her, but at no point does this come across as mawkish or sentimental. She has a gift for touching the heart of the matter, and there is one particularly memorable scene in Katie’s flat soon after her death that had me laughing in one paragraph and then welling up in the next. The whole book walks a bittersweet line beautifully.
The conceit, that heaven is made of the titular thousand rooms, and that Katie needs to find her own ‘room’ is a great one. She is caught between two worlds; the world she has left behind (a beautifully realised Sydney, which Jones describes Sydney so vividly, and her affection for the city and the country as a whole shines through the pages of the book, placing it firmly in its setting), and the worlds beyond the mortal realm. She visits many otherworldly ‘rooms’ in an attempt to find her own heaven, and Jones explores different spiritual perceptions of what might happen to a soul beyond the grave. Part philosophy, part speculative fiction, part romance, this is intelligent commercial women’s fiction at its best.
When Katie does get to grips with the hereafter, there are so many beautiful moments that Jones brings to life in her elegant and masterful prose. Her meetings with other souls, some of whom are searching like her and some of whom have found their ‘room’ are written sensitively and with a keen eye for human emotion. There are so many moments in this novel that set it apart from anything that’s gone before it, and give the reader a tingle or a shiver or a smile. Helen Jones is a writer of great talent and accomplishment, and her storytelling is second to none. This novel would read well for readers who loved 'The Lovely Bones' and 'The Timetraveller’s Wife' as its blend of magical realism, romance, humour, sadness and philosophy cannot fail to enthrall. A delight from start to finish, it’s a novel that left me thinking long after I read the last page.

Judging from the cover I expected this to be more girly than it turned out to be, but it felt almost like a psychological thriller at times, with plenty of excellent scenes as our heroine moves through life and death experiences and a thousand rooms.
I must confess that I flirted with spiritualism in the past and therefor took a particular interest in this book, finding much that agrees with various strands of spiritualism and similar philosophies. In that respect I would call the book well-researched or at least grounded in what some circles report as experiences or theory.
The characterisation and the story behind our heroine's life and death is engaging in its own right, which makes this such an enjoyable and wonderful read.
Highly recommended.


