Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

21 reviews

_fallinglight_'s review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Drug use, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Cancer and Death of parent

breeyore's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Just finished this book and I already want to read it again. My emotions may never recover. Also I’m completely in love with Henry the time traveling punk rock librarian.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Cursing, Death, Infertility, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Suicide, Blood, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Infidelity, and Violence

queermothman's review against another edition

dark emotional sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

Disappointed in how BORING a good chunk of this thing was.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Miscarriage, and Sexual content

Moderate: Ableism, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Infidelity, and Racism

Minor: Car accident

lenorayoder's review against another edition

emotional

• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Better than I thought it would be, but not as good as I hoped it would be once I got into it. It's very interesting to read a fucked up relationship develop from the perspective of the people in it. They do love each other, but they're also overly dependent, unhealthy, and don't communicate well. They are the only people who understand each other, but it is because they have both engineered it to be so. On some level they both know the relationship is doomed, but they don't want to be without each other.

I found the way the author handled time travel interesting, especially the implications of Clare's

deja vu moments, and the sketch with the trimmed date

. The underlying terror that Henry almost constantly feels permeates the book, and one of the unvoiced stumbling blocks of their relationship is that Clare never really seems to understand that fear -

evidenced by the fact that she so desires to have a child that will likely have the same terrible condition

. The way Niffenegger's chosen to depict this story and time travel unfortunately means that the reader never really gets to sit with these characters, and by the end of the book I still felt like I didn't really know them, just their relationship. I wish the book was more narrow in scope, or gave us more insight into what Clare and Henry are like apart. The Time Traveler's Wife is a compelling title, but the book is not about Clare, it's entirely about Clare and Henry's relationship with everything else serving as set dressing. 

Overall enjoyed and would recommend. Sometimes the descriptions and references get a little self-indulgent and pretentious, but seeing this complex relationship evolve from the perspective of two incredibly biased narrators was always interesting and page-turning. Also,

fuck you Gomez. Cherisse, why the fuck did you marry that man, let alone have kids with him. Yikes

. I had to list so many content warnings and I didn't even get them all. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Alcohol

Minor: Domestic abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Violence, Vomit, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

clementine9's review against another edition

emotional funny inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Miscarriage, Sexual content, and Blood

Moderate: Infidelity

Minor: Homophobia

tessa52's review against another edition

emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Drug use, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Suicide, Violence, Car accident, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

souvraya's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I quite liked the first half of the book up to the wedding, but then enjoyed it less and less. It's a really interesting concept, often well-executed and the non-linear storytelling worked well. It was particularly interesting to see characters interacting in a variety of stages of their lives.

Now for the problems. The second and third part of the book get increasingly depressing in a way that felt like traumatising events were being being piled on for no reason. The characters barely have time to react to each of these events so they don't feel fully developed, just added in for shock value.

It was very disappointing how little agency and personality the titular wife had. Clare was interesting to read about as a child, then she became much more bland as an adult. It was really all about Henry, so naming the book after Clare is not representative of the role she takes.

Another disappointment was that a lot of characters' shitty behaviour has no repercussions whatsoever, Gomez and Celia especially rubbed me the wrong way. It doesn't get called out, nobody reacts to it, and it often doesn't cause any problems. When that happens too often, it feels very unsatisfying to me and when it happens with the main characters it calls their romance into question.

Even worse, there was a major part of the story later on, that consumed some of the characters completely for a long time, and then it suddenly turned into an afterthought. It seems that the author didn't know what to do with Alba as a character, so she was simply turned into a Mary Sue that's somehow immune to all of the aforementioned trauma. It's very unrealistic to think of what she goes through, yet no one seems to care about her and she continues to be quite happy-go-lucky.

Some of the time traveling concepts fell apart towards the end, with several aspects that should have been relevant being swept under the table. There's no real or implied resolution to what might be causing it, whether there will be more time travelers in the future, how society treats them, etc. With these topics ignored, it only barely fits into the sci-fi genre. It's really more a romance with a quirky setting.

Finally, there was some really out-of-touch racism and social commentary at times. POC, queer and disabled characters were handled terribly and I was especially weirded out by the term "Auschwitz thin" and a character's insistence that an adopted child wouldn't really be theirs, especially because nobody offered an alternative opinion on that statement. The book really needed more editing to cut out all of that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility, Miscarriage, Suicide, and Death of parent

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Infidelity, and Sexual violence

val_theburrowofstories's review against another edition

emotional mysterious sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Cancer, Death, Gun violence, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Suicide, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

potsnpots's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Alcoholism

Minor: Death, Drug use, Homophobia, Infertility, Infidelity, Medical content, Grief, Car accident, and Death of parent

ejoymiller11's review against another edition

emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I am not usually a tough critic, but I did not love this for several reasons. 

1. This story (in my opinion) was told backwards, and would last the test of time better had it been told the other way around. Being about time travel, the story bounces around quite a bit. However, I would argue the story more closely follows Clare’s linear timeline. Before we actually get to know the two main characters as a couple, the first half of the book is about how Clare knew Henry as a child and teenager. We learn about Henry’s lustful thoughts about her even when she is underage, even when she is prepubescent, which made me very uncomfortable. In my opinion, had we learned about their adult relationship first by strictly following Henry’s timeline, and had Henry just straight up not had inappropriate thoughts about a CHILD, I think the relationship would seem less creepy (but let’s be honest, some of what happened would be creepy, inappropriate, and sick regardless). 

2. About 200 pages of the 536 pages I read weren’t relevant. I don’t understand why certain scenes were necessary as they didn’t contribute to the plot, character development, or context of the story. The whole infidelity thing? For what. 

3. INCONSISTENCIES. And inaccuracies. Some of this book just straight up didn’t make sense. I found myself wondering SO many times, “did the author do literally ANY research??” Yes, probably with certain art pieces and music mentioned in the story, but certainly not how pregnancy, miscarriage, birth, hypothermia, and other medical things work. Furthermore, so many times the book would mention something like “they decided to leave the kids at home!” And on the next page, “the kids were playing quietly in the corner.” Like did no one proofread this? I’m lost. 

4. Sometimes it was really hard to understand who was speaking. The book bounces between Henry’s and Clare’s perspectives, but in sections of the dialogue there are long stretches with no indication of who is speaking. Several times I had to go back and reread to understand the context of what was happening and what the characters were feeling. 

I felt like this was a great concept that was so poorly executed. This could be a fantastic, timeless love story, but it just fell flat for me. The writing combined with the characters who weren’t just flawed, but horrible people, ruined it for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Miscarriage, Suicide, and Car accident

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Chronic illness, Drug use, Infertility, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail