Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

31 reviews

potsnpots's review against another edition

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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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taylormadespines's review against another edition

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This story has not aged well. Henry is a groomer through and through. 

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flowers_and_cows's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

The story of Clare and Henry was surprisingly easy to follow, even with all of Henry's time traveling. A great story, and the ending left me wanting and wishing that there was more. 

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ejoymiller11's review against another edition

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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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vannahcabana's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

The timeline of this book is all over the place since it’s about time-traveling. You really need to pay attention to the dates/ages given of the characters before reading the section. Otherwise, you’ll be completely lost! It is a fairly good read though! 

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ems_rxlibrary's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

The actual writing of this book was beautiful. The content…was pretty uncomfortable at times. 
There is a moment when Clare is in distress and asks Henry to tell her something nice. He tells her about a time when they were swimming and Clare was wearing this bikini (that he describes in detail) and back then she told him about getting her period. The problem? She was 12. I know that they were going to be married in the future, but they weren’t at that moment. AND THAT IS THE MEMORY HE THINKS OF???
A nurse that is literally only in one small sentence in this entire novel is described as “a fat blond nurse”. Why? Why is that the way we have to describe her? 
I hated Gomez. He NEEDED to be cut out of Clare’s life. What a skunk. 
When Clare was growing up and Henry kept time traveling back to her he says that he was often aroused- again, she was young and he wasn’t and it just made me cringe. 
Their relationship had a lot of buildup when Clare was young and then the moment she turns 18 I feel like their relationship was built upon sex and the fact that they were always supposed to be married. I was just expecting more from a book that is touted as some magnificent love story.

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minimoefoe's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-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? No

4.5

the ending didn't hit me like i thought it was going to but the rest of this book had me hooked the entire time

i don't know what it is about the ending, specifically henry's death, but it just didn't make me that emotional. like, i knew it was objectively sad but i wasn't as bothered as i wanted to be and was expecting to be.

the only other thing I was a bit iffy on was a couple of moments with henry and young clare. i don't think he actually said/did anything dodgy but there were moments where what he was thinking was a bit questionable. like about comparing future clare to young clare and how it's was okay for him to feel a certain type of way about young clare because he is with adult clare, something like that. it wasn't awful but it was a bit dodgy.

as for stuff i loved, basically everything else. i loved that clare got to see henry one last time, i loved seeing each perspective (both clare and henry were interesting characters to follow, i loved seeing henry getting to know clare and clare getting to know henry and how that worked when henry would leave the meadow and get back to current time clare.

i of course didn't love to see them lose so many babies but i did find the story interesting. i'm glad they got a child eventually and that she enjoys time traveling rather than seeing it as more of a curse like henry does

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readintherain's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25


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mireyadiaz's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional 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

4.0

Main problem as a genz reading this was actually the entire plotline with Gomez. I felt it wasn't really needed, at least not at the end like yikes. Other than that not a bad read, but then again I'm a sucker for time travel tropes just for complexities of the thought and possibility of it. Also, like the author is clearly white woman, because any person of a minority most likely would not continuously describe a person's ethnicity or weight whenever they see a new person. But luckily for me my default description of people is Latine like meself 🤓. But yeah... it just depends on your cup of tea. Also, I really found the Catholics kinda funny like in general.(as a catholic🤣) By that I mean there do be crazy ones like that, unless like my family, sin is expected and whatever.🤷🏽‍♀️

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fjcookie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

this book is everything! love! love! love!

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