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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
I enjoyed this time loop adventure. It centers on Carter, a technician at Hawke, stuck in a time loop … until Mariana, a neuroscientist from ReLive, joins him. Will they get out of the loop? What caused it?
I really liked Mariana and Carter. As a math nerd, it was great to see a woman in stem represented. I chuckled every time she spouted off digits of pi. My favorite character, though, was Carter. His innate intelligence, love of food, and his snarky conversations with David made his personality leap off the page.
I will admit that ReLive is a very interesting concept to me. I have aphantasia and suspect I had SDAM, so the possibility of some injections improving your memory like that? Wow.
I love elephants, so the cameo from their ancestor was super fun, too. Oh, and Maggie the cat was a show stopper. Too cute.
If you want a book that has some interesting (aka fiction novel) science, a love story, and a mystery, then I’d give this one a read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for an arc of this book.
I really liked Mariana and Carter. As a math nerd, it was great to see a woman in stem represented. I chuckled every time she spouted off digits of pi. My favorite character, though, was Carter. His innate intelligence, love of food, and his snarky conversations with David made his personality leap off the page.
I will admit that ReLive is a very interesting concept to me. I have aphantasia and suspect I had SDAM, so the possibility of some injections improving your memory like that? Wow.
I love elephants, so the cameo from their ancestor was super fun, too. Oh, and Maggie the cat was a show stopper. Too cute.
If you want a book that has some interesting (aka fiction novel) science, a love story, and a mystery, then I’d give this one a read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for an arc of this book.
I enjoyed this time loop adventure. It centers on Carter, a technician at Hawke, stuck in a time loop … until Mariana, a neuroscientist from ReLive, joins him. Will they get out of the loop? What caused it?
I really liked Mariana and Carter. As a math nerd, it was great to see a woman in stem represented. I chuckled every time she spouted off digits of pi. My favorite character, though, was Carter. His innate intelligence, love of food, and his snarky conversations with David made his personality leap off the page.
I will admit that ReLive is a very interesting concept to me. I have aphantasia and suspect I had SDAM, so the possibility of some injections improving your memory like that? Wow.
I love elephants, so the cameo from their ancestor was super fun, too. Oh, and Maggie the cat was a show stopper. Too cute.
If you want a book that has some interesting (aka fiction novel) science, a love story, and a mystery, then I’d give this one a read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for an arc of this book.
I really liked Mariana and Carter. As a math nerd, it was great to see a woman in stem represented. I chuckled every time she spouted off digits of pi. My favorite character, though, was Carter. His innate intelligence, love of food, and his snarky conversations with David made his personality leap off the page.
I will admit that ReLive is a very interesting concept to me. I have aphantasia and suspect I had SDAM, so the possibility of some injections improving your memory like that? Wow.
I love elephants, so the cameo from their ancestor was super fun, too. Oh, and Maggie the cat was a show stopper. Too cute.
If you want a book that has some interesting (aka fiction novel) science, a love story, and a mystery, then I’d give this one a read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for an arc of this book.
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
I received this book via the publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Mike Chen does it again! Every one of his books I have read so far I have highly enjoyed! Such a fun and enjoyable story to read! Mariana and Carter were fun main characters to follow along to on this time loop tale! I really like how friendship centered this story remained until closer to the end. The story really was also a great example as how human beings even if we want to be alone, we still also crave that interaction with others.
Through the novel, we see Mariana and Carter face many challenges and master the art of patience. Their strategizing for each time loop by mental memory is crazy! It shows how powerful our mind is and what we can remember if we need to.
Mariana and her sacrifice to go back in time to stop the loop is such a powerful part to this story and one of my favorites. She risked everything to save her younger self's, Carter's, and everyone else's futures. I really like how the story ended and seeing she made it possible for Carter and her to cross paths and begin a hopefully long life together.
Mike Chen does it again! Every one of his books I have read so far I have highly enjoyed! Such a fun and enjoyable story to read! Mariana and Carter were fun main characters to follow along to on this time loop tale! I really like how friendship centered this story remained until closer to the end. The story really was also a great example as how human beings even if we want to be alone, we still also crave that interaction with others.
Through the novel, we see Mariana and Carter face many challenges and master the art of patience. Their strategizing for each time loop by mental memory is crazy! It shows how powerful our mind is and what we can remember if we need to.
I received an advanced ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The synopsis of this book totally sucked me in, but unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations. It wasn’t bad, but just didn’t suck me in and really hold my attention like I’d hoped. The beginning and end were great, but the middle got fuzzy and it felt like the story lost its way. I think with 50ish fewer pages, the story would have better flow.
I did find the premise unique at least! You don’t need to be a science nerd to understand what’s going on. Very accessible for all audiences.
The synopsis of this book totally sucked me in, but unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations. It wasn’t bad, but just didn’t suck me in and really hold my attention like I’d hoped. The beginning and end were great, but the middle got fuzzy and it felt like the story lost its way. I think with 50ish fewer pages, the story would have better flow.
I did find the premise unique at least! You don’t need to be a science nerd to understand what’s going on. Very accessible for all audiences.
emotional
reflective
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
*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.
I love time loop stories. One of my favorite things is that they’ve been around for long enough that authors can play with the conventions of an established genre. A QUANTUM LOVE STORY does this to fantastic effect, using memory, food, and a plausible but loose edition of quantum mechanics to build a story of two people trying to escape a time loop. It’s about grief, sacrifice, and care for oneself and others. There’s an emphasis on the importance of fully inhabiting moments. Not every single one, necessarily, but learning to regularly take the time to enjoy food as more than fuel, learn new things, and appreciate small interactions.
Because the story starts from Carter’s perspective, and then switches to Mariana, pretty early on, I thought it first that the point of view would switch back-and-forth between them. Instead, most of the book is from Mariana's perspective. With Carter as the more personally spontaneous one, indulging his love of good food as his bank account resets with each loop, staying in Mariana’s perspective means that we see her growing appreciation for the way Carter surprises her, and how he chooses to cultivate moments of calm and enjoyment in stressful circumstances that seem like they’ll never end. I like the way they strategize through the iterations, figuring out how to keep their research progress across the loops, using the only seemingly durable resource they have, Carter’s eidetic memory, and Mariana’s less precise but scientifically enhanced recall.
There’s a turning point where Carter’s memory stops helping them, and Mariana has to make the most of her time with him before, eventually, a loop starts where he has no idea who she is and she must figure out a solution to their problem on her own. I have a particular interest in stories where protagonists risk the possibility of their own non-existence in the course of trying to make things better. I don't just mean death, but the loss of other people's memories of who someone was and what they did. One of the staples of time loop stories as a genre is the frustration and futility of trying to convince those who don’t remember the loops that anything strange is happening at all. It creates this lopsided balance of access to information, where as the loops continue one person knows more and more about the other, but the non-looping person doesn’t get to reciprocate in a fully informed way. You can create an increasing sense of isolation as the closer the looper gets to someone in their life, the more intimate they feel about details that took a very long time for the other person to tell them. Having two people loop solves some of that, but the onset of memory loss means that eventually this imbalance happens anyway. It's made all the more poignant Carter and Mariana spent so long progressing as partners, with fairly symmetrical access to information once a few loops had happened where Mariana was up to speed. Having that intimacy and then losing it piles on grief and heartbreak, especially since Mariana was grieving her missing stepsister and best friend, Shay, who vanished several months ago and is presumed dead. The loop at first gave her time to process that loss in a way she hadn’t been able to before, but then it piles on new loss when Carter’s memory starts fading.
Narratively, I love the ending. It’s perfect for the story, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Emotionally, fuck you Mike Chen (appreciatively) for making me feel this much in this manner. You took one of my favorite sub-genres and added a masterwork to the canon. I look forward to how your next book inevitably shatters me in the best ways.
I love time loop stories. One of my favorite things is that they’ve been around for long enough that authors can play with the conventions of an established genre. A QUANTUM LOVE STORY does this to fantastic effect, using memory, food, and a plausible but loose edition of quantum mechanics to build a story of two people trying to escape a time loop. It’s about grief, sacrifice, and care for oneself and others. There’s an emphasis on the importance of fully inhabiting moments. Not every single one, necessarily, but learning to regularly take the time to enjoy food as more than fuel, learn new things, and appreciate small interactions.
Because the story starts from Carter’s perspective, and then switches to Mariana, pretty early on, I thought it first that the point of view would switch back-and-forth between them. Instead, most of the book is from Mariana's perspective. With Carter as the more personally spontaneous one, indulging his love of good food as his bank account resets with each loop, staying in Mariana’s perspective means that we see her growing appreciation for the way Carter surprises her, and how he chooses to cultivate moments of calm and enjoyment in stressful circumstances that seem like they’ll never end. I like the way they strategize through the iterations, figuring out how to keep their research progress across the loops, using the only seemingly durable resource they have, Carter’s eidetic memory, and Mariana’s less precise but scientifically enhanced recall.
There’s a turning point where Carter’s memory stops helping them, and Mariana has to make the most of her time with him before, eventually, a loop starts where he has no idea who she is and she must figure out a solution to their problem on her own. I have a particular interest in stories where protagonists risk the possibility of their own non-existence in the course of trying to make things better. I don't just mean death, but the loss of other people's memories of who someone was and what they did. One of the staples of time loop stories as a genre is the frustration and futility of trying to convince those who don’t remember the loops that anything strange is happening at all. It creates this lopsided balance of access to information, where as the loops continue one person knows more and more about the other, but the non-looping person doesn’t get to reciprocate in a fully informed way. You can create an increasing sense of isolation as the closer the looper gets to someone in their life, the more intimate they feel about details that took a very long time for the other person to tell them. Having two people loop solves some of that, but the onset of memory loss means that eventually this imbalance happens anyway. It's made all the more poignant Carter and Mariana spent so long progressing as partners, with fairly symmetrical access to information once a few loops had happened where Mariana was up to speed. Having that intimacy and then losing it piles on grief and heartbreak, especially since Mariana was grieving her missing stepsister and best friend, Shay, who vanished several months ago and is presumed dead. The loop at first gave her time to process that loss in a way she hadn’t been able to before, but then it piles on new loss when Carter’s memory starts fading.
Narratively, I love the ending. It’s perfect for the story, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Emotionally, fuck you Mike Chen (appreciatively) for making me feel this much in this manner. You took one of my favorite sub-genres and added a masterwork to the canon. I look forward to how your next book inevitably shatters me in the best ways.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Animal death, Cursing, Death
Minor: Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Abandonment
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
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
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-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
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-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
A little bit too repetitive for me but I overall enjoyed this rollercoaster of a story. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read your ARC!