becasaur27 's review for:

Big Time by Ben H. Winters

2.5

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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So. Yeah. Did this book have redeeming parts? Sure or I'd not have finished it. But I just really did NOT love it. Anyway, onwards to what I didn't care for. Time travel, right? It's never going to make a lot of sense when explained in a novel. (Probably. IDK. Maybe there's a future where we all understand how it works and it's obvious, I guess.) But this novel didn't even really try, but pretended that it tried? It didn't make any sense. It was towards the end of the book that it was supposedly explained. I don't feel like it was just "oh, YOU (as in me) didn't get it" I'm fairly sure it made no sense or lacked enough explanation. Maybe it made sense in the author's head. Who knows. There are some books where I'm very shocked that the author identifies as male or female when they write a character who is not. This book was not one of them. Not at all surprised that this female character was written by a male author. The kidnapper seemed a complete rip-off of The Bride (Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill), but with dark hair. 

So. What DID I like? Why did I keep reading? I liked the inclusion of a non-binary teenaged child. I did want to know what happened. What was going on with the kidnapped woman? But I didn't find those answers satisfying.

It seemed like the "dead" teenager was injected with durational matter from her grandmother and that was messing with her identity. But then her best friend said that it was quite clear around the eyes that it was NOT her. But then we find out it WAS her. WTF. It just didn't really make sense to me even within the bounds of this story, but it was hard to know it wasn't all going to be explained in the end. And it wasn't that long of a book. So I kept going.