mirandadarrow 's review for:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

4.0

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I'm late to the party with this one, because it came out years ago and so did the movie based on it. In fact, I can only barely remember watching the movie. I remember how it ended, so that wasn't a surprise and didn't punch me in the gut like it did when I watched the movie.

I'm researching time travel books and this one is a biggie in the romantic subplot arena, right up there with Outlander. Heck, half of the time travel romance books you look at when shopping online now practically have this cover. The same Tiffany blue background, the word "Time" as part of the title in Times New Roman font. They're practically cover clones, some of them.

I liked the main characters and the plot was definitely compelling. I was frustrated with their dogged insistence on some things which lead to big plot holes. I'll put it in spoilers

Spoiler

her insistence on a biological child after many miscarriages caused by 'time traveling fetus' which lead to a HUGE PLOT HOLE in how on earth was Henry ever born, as he too would have been a time traveling fetus. Also, neither Henry nor their time traveling daughter ever traveled before they were old enough to at least know how to eat food and get out of the cold? Otherwise, how does either baby survive infancy? All of that seemed unnecessary, and just gross, that she's lying next to her dead bird baby, time after time, and kept at it so ludicrously as if biological offspring were the only thing that mattered.

I'm reading another of her books now, Her Fearful Symmetry, and we'll see how that goes.