Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Time Traveler's Wife

Where do I even begin with this book. I had no intention of ever reading this, because I have seen the basic gist in way too much of Steven Moffat's Doctor Who writing (derogatory). My book club picked it for this month and I decided to slog my way through.

Reader, it was just as bad as I imagined. Reading interviews with the author somehow made it worse. She says in a modern interview regarding Steven Moffat's own TV series version of this book (you'd think he'd get tired of creating the same story over and over again) that the reader is *supposed* to be uncomfortable with the idea of adult Henry visiting child Clare repeatedly, but then in other interviews describes Henry as "there's not going to be some fabulous perfect soulmate out there for me, so I'll just make him up", so which is it, Audrey?

My biggest issue with this book is that I didn't care a single bit about either of our main characters. Clare is effectively a cardboard cut-out that has a trauma porn life journey but we never see any of the consequences. Imagine basically any of the big-T traumas that a wealthy beautiful woman in Chicago might undergo, and Clare lives it. Are we ever inside her head long enough to feel her grapple with these things? No. Because the entire focus of this book is about the time travel schtick. We are instead shown scenes that are gruesome and difficult for the reader to read, but that seem to just be par for the course for Clare, because she always just seems to be fine and solely focused on Henry at the expense of literally anything else. Henry's internal monologue is absolutely insufferable. I nearly threw my phone across the room and quit when he described his erection as "tall enough to ride an amusement park ride without a parent" in the first thirty pages of the book. I couldn't find myself caring about Henry or his struggles at any point because I was too busy making increasingly horrified grimaces at the things that he was thinking, often about an actual child.

And then there's the time travel schtick itself. I *LOVE* time travel stories. I've read gobs of Doctor Who/Torchwood fanfiction that incorporate timey-wimey stuff, ranging from silly nonsense to deeply thoughtful explorations of the concepts that I still think about. But I kept getting so caught up on the inconsistencies and the "y tho" about the way the author constructed this. Did she only make it that he time travels naked so that there was the creepy ick factor of child Clare finding him that way? The hand-wavey in universe explanation for why he consistently goes back and visits child Clare just didn't make sense to me. There's a running joke in Doctor Who about the fact that of all the places on planet Earth, and the broader solar system and universe, why is the crisis ALWAYS in London, and this felt like an even more egregious and nonsensical version of that. They talk about the danger of him driving a car or flying in a plane but then have him walking around with a baby on his shoulders. Life is so dangerous for him when he travels that he has to know how to pick locks and fight, but somehow he isn't WELL KNOWN in the city of Chicago? How would it not be a news story the FIRST time this happens that a man disappears in public before people's very eyes leaving a pile of clothes behind, or that a man appears on the middle of a sidewalk out of nowhere completely naked? If he keeps time traveling in and out of the same places and times, why does he not do a better job taking care of himself with caches of supplies and hidden keys than just trusting a six year old to keep clothes for him? Nothing about this story makes sense actually.

All in all I hated this book just as much as I expected to. I don't normally make myself read 500+ page/16+ hour books that I hate, but you can't leave ratings on a DNF, so I finished the whole thing out of spite.

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hjb_128's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

2.25

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spectacles_and_books's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

This broke me, in the best way. And I will never watch an adaptation, because this was perfect.

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ratnipulated's review against another edition

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2.25

This book was not as tear jerking or sweet as I had hoped for. Good writing but a lot of the romance felt gross because it was occuring between a middle aged man and a teenage girl. There also was a sexual assault/physical assault scene that was entirely unnecessary. It added nothing to the story but to fulfill some sort of victim fantasy. Not to mention there was quite a bit of fatphobia.

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agw622's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

This is such a captivating book. The time traveling is well handled. The overlaps are used to add suspense especially at the end. It can be quite intense and sad at places. While not a happy read, it's an amazing read.

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tvintrs's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

This book is technically written very well. It's easy to read and personally I found it relatively easy to keep track of the different ages and years within each chapter as Niffenegger helpfully starts each one with the pivotal character's ages. Some of the dialogue feels a bit out of place in the character's mouths but on the whole the text itself is quite easy to get into. I listened to most of the book through audiobook, but then finished with the physical written copy and found both as easy as the other.
That, however, is largely where my personal enjoyment of the book ends. I'm not a huge romance book reader so going in this was already hard for me to get into, but at times I found the themes quite uncomfortable to read through and skipped a large section of one of the chapters

which focused on the newly 18 year old Clare losing her virginity to a 40+ year old Henry

. I can see how some people would fall in love with the characters and enjoy their love story but I just found it vaguely uncomfortable the whole time.

How an adult Henry visits a 13 year old Clare, knowing he is going to marry her and commenting on her ''blossoming breasts'' just veered this way out of being romantic to me and I couldn't get the idea of grooming out of my head for most of it. The way Clare is trained to constantly wait for him her whole life, feeling guilty for letting her eye stray when he's off with others unaware of her existence, just didn't sit right for me, personally. The whole storyline around the miscarriage was incredibly dodgy too and the eventual pregnancy bordered on dubious consent.

However, if this book isn't meant to be just a romantic story and was intended to have problematic aspects then I'd say it hit the mark perfectly in how the story weaves through their lives and shows the impact of meeting Henry on Clare's life and how she almost becomes stationary while he keeps moving. A rippling wave meeting the shore and settling, even if briefly. Alba is a pure joy to read and I would have loved to have seen more of her and known her fate, but equally I think the book ended on a relatively good note so can't be too upset at that. Would I read it again? No, probably not. Do I think it's terrible? Also no. As long as you don't go in with rose tinted glasses and see the relationship for what it is, I think it can be a fascinating read.

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edg5000's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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