Reviews with content warning for Car accident - The Time Traveler's Wife

This took me a frustrating number of tries to actually finish, but once I got through it I was really glad for it. It’s really devastating and made me sob like a little baby and that was mostly good! But a little bit of the end just felt like an unnecessary downer. The book is really just a lot to think about, it really makes you think a lot.

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banksonman's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

3.25

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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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riverofhorton's review against another edition

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I had to take a couple of days to cool off after deciding to stop reading this book, I just found there to be too much homophobia, racism, and misogyny to continue.

The final straw for me was getting jumpscared by an utterly needless homophobic slur (as it was until very recently) less than 100 pages in. Given the 'past' parts of the book are set in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I could have deal with some casual prejudice, so as the world was at that time, especially if it were there to make a point and/or portray that character as being a negative person. But these prejudices are not only blatant, but could have been removed from the story without it losing anything.

And there is also the moral weirdness surrounding the relationship between itself. From Claire's perspective, she first met Henry at the age of ~5 years old, when he was in his 40s. He visited her regularly growing up, even waiting for her to turn 18 so he could have sex with her on her birthday. Sounds creepy, right? From his perspective though, he first her in his late 20s, her being early 20s, and the relationship proceeded somewhat normally to begin with, only a couple of mentions of how long she has known a future version of him. It's just kind of a mess, and considering he could time travel as a child as well, I don't quite understand why he couldn't have been a child of a similar age, or even have the whole thing contain within their respective adulthoods.

It's such a shame, the basic premise of two people falling in love out of sync because of time travel has the potential to be incredible, but this was just a disappointment. It's the first book I've ever DNFed, and it saddens me that it's a Sci-Fi book (one of my favourite genres) that can claim that title.

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zunn's review

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emotional medium-paced

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

2.0

I feel very weird about this book. I enjoyed the writing style and the concept behind the time travelling, especially questioning the idea of determinism. But the book is problematic in many ways. There is a romantization of a grooming situation and lots of racist stereotypes.

I also think there is criticism on Clare's position in the book, with her waiting for Henry all the time. I think it does also show how men are allowed to be adventurous and not zomen, but i couldn't really tell wether the author was being purposely exaggerated in that direction, or willfully unaware..

Similarly, I was appalled by Henry's behaviour in many ways : I found him to be grooming Clare and rapey, both when Clare is a child and when she is an adult. He is very manipulative, and their over achieving sex life clearly poses a problem to Clare, that is brushed off as him being passionate. I also am wondering about his description as a womanizer suddenly turned quiet library boyfriend. As if he always was a man to be feared, as Ingrid warned, but that it would only appear at the end. I wondered throughout the whole book wether the end would have some kind of moral showing the wrongs of his behaviour.
Towards Alba, I find that his fondness for her isn't as authe tic as Clare's, again foreshadowing a huge gender bias imo. She sees Alba as her child, he seems to see her as an annoyance and an object.

I think this book would have been up to my alley if the end would show some kind of twist : Clare realising she's never been free, both of her 'destiny' and Henry. I think the theme would have been of great interest, and the book ends up being just problematic.

I also was annoyed about the racist stereotypes in the book, and the fact that no real character is important besides Henry haha...

Also I hated Gomez with all my heart.
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passionatereader78's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious sad tense medium-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

5.0

Wonderfully written book! I enjoyed this exploration of time travel. I loved the relationship between Claire and Henry. There is so much heat in theses pages! I love the way the story was easy to follow. The time jumps were uncomplicated and I could follow the plot. I loved everything about this book!
This is Henry and Claire's beautifully complicated love story!

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