Jackson explained he enjoyed the novel because he found it "curiously optimistic" and uplifting because of the narrator's sense of humor, adding there was a difference between its tone and subject matter. He felt very few films dealt with the loss of a loved one. Jackson foresaw the most challenging element in the novel to adapt was the portrayal of Susie, the protagonist, in her heaven, and making it "ethereal and emotional but not hokey." Saoirse Ronan explained Jackson chose to depict the afterlife as depending on Susie's emotions. "Whenever Susie feels happy, Heaven is sunny and there's birds and everything. Whenever it's not so great, it's raining or she's in the middle of an ocean." Jackson described the book's description of "heaven" as being an "In-Between" rather than a true heaven and said he was not trying to paint a definitive picture of Heaven itself. "hen Jackson created Susie's heaven, in a 1973 world, he went through the "Partridge Family" television show archives as a reference."