readerjenn's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
orbert83's review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.0
Incredibly strange book, but charming and I kept finding myself smiling at the interactions between the characters. The likable characters made up for the somewhat confusing plot.
kduncan's review
2.0
I received an arc for this book from netgalley. I think it was a cute story but it was lacking. I felt like there was a huge build up and then just nothing. Nephele starts out with one main reason to build a time travel machine and when things go wrong she has multiple reasons to fix it. She does learn some valuable lessons along the way but the ending was just disappointing. I feel like she went from being a true scientist to being just a love sick teenager. There were a lot of what ifs that I can understand with the topic of time travel and science but I also feel when its story you have the creative freedom to make things possible. I just think that it is a really good plot that was not executed well.
ljrinaldi's review
3.0
The problem is, the concept of this book is great. Caught in a time loop, Fi must relive her freshman year over and over again. And, is supposed to learn from her mistakes. Only, she doesn't. She goes back in time 10 times, and still doesn't really learn. It is more like she is forced to learn, but she doesn't learn organically.
The problem I had with the book was that I didn't care. I didn't care about Fi. I didn't care about Vera. I didn't care about her parents, who are never really developed, and I certainly didn't care about Jazz, who eventually becomes her love interest.
Fi just didn't make any sense. She didn't accidentally repeat the time loop. She repeated it because she thought she could do a better job each time. But, instead of wanting to make friends, she just kept pushing them away, until she met people who wouldn't let her.
I might have liked Fi better if I had understood her, but we don't even get inside her head when the story is told in the first person, and that is a tough thing to do.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.
The problem I had with the book was that I didn't care. I didn't care about Fi. I didn't care about Vera. I didn't care about her parents, who are never really developed, and I certainly didn't care about Jazz, who eventually becomes her love interest.
Fi just didn't make any sense. She didn't accidentally repeat the time loop. She repeated it because she thought she could do a better job each time. But, instead of wanting to make friends, she just kept pushing them away, until she met people who wouldn't let her.
I might have liked Fi better if I had understood her, but we don't even get inside her head when the story is told in the first person, and that is a tough thing to do.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.
librarypatronus's review
4.0
I love time loops - because so often they allow a character to learn and grow and develop as they go through the same interactions over and over from different angles. That wasn’t the case here, Nephele is looping alone, poking holes in the memories of those around her to make her continued freshman status possible. She has to grow by seeing the unintended side effects hurt the people she loves, by losing someone who matters to her, and by learning to make friends.
Nephele has a lot going on. She’s a math genius, she talks to a photograph, and she’s run out of friends. So she decides, naturally, to create a time travel app to redo her Freshman year, so that she can be popular. It doesn’t work out how she thinks, and her life gets even more complicated.
This gave me some Coraline vibes, not spooky, but in that as her parents got impacted by the loops, she was sort of having to live with the approximation of her parents in what she thought she wanted.
I do recommend this if you love a Groundhog Day book, it was easy to read and plenty of fun.
Nephele has a lot going on. She’s a math genius, she talks to a photograph, and she’s run out of friends. So she decides, naturally, to create a time travel app to redo her Freshman year, so that she can be popular. It doesn’t work out how she thinks, and her life gets even more complicated.
This gave me some Coraline vibes, not spooky, but in that as her parents got impacted by the loops, she was sort of having to live with the approximation of her parents in what she thought she wanted.
I do recommend this if you love a Groundhog Day book, it was easy to read and plenty of fun.
kindleandilluminate's review
5.0
Freshman year starts terribly for math prodigy Nephele Weather, with her best friend ghosting her to join the cool kids, and it only goes downhill from there. So naturally she turns to math for a way out, inventing a time machine (or rather, phone app) to let her redo the year. And redo it again. And again, and again...
Time Travel for Love and Profit, a mix of Groundhog Day and All the Birds in the Sky, is as aggressively weird as its teen genius protagonist, and I loved every second of it. Is this book quirky? Absolutely. And all that quirkiness is completely delightful and heartfelt. I genuinely didn't expect to get as emotional as I did, but Nephele and her time loop tragedies are genuinely moving, as she struggles with the consequences of her actions, like staying a teenager forever while everyone else grows up and forgets her. Nephele's voice is unique and young - I seriously appreciated that this book managed to feel like the YOUNG part of YA, an age group that too often gets left behind between middle grade and 17/18-year-old YA. I can see how the stylistic writing and oddball characters might irritate some readers (although, I grew up with so many rainbow-suspender-wearing, poetry-quoting amateur magicians like Jazz, it's hard for me to take seriously anyone who says he's *too* quirky to be realistic), but I found them, and the book as a whole, playful, charming, and refreshing. It's a whimsical story, but one filled with heart.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy!
Time Travel for Love and Profit, a mix of Groundhog Day and All the Birds in the Sky, is as aggressively weird as its teen genius protagonist, and I loved every second of it. Is this book quirky? Absolutely. And all that quirkiness is completely delightful and heartfelt. I genuinely didn't expect to get as emotional as I did, but Nephele and her time loop tragedies are genuinely moving, as she struggles with the consequences of her actions, like staying a teenager forever while everyone else grows up and forgets her. Nephele's voice is unique and young - I seriously appreciated that this book managed to feel like the YOUNG part of YA, an age group that too often gets left behind between middle grade and 17/18-year-old YA. I can see how the stylistic writing and oddball characters might irritate some readers (although, I grew up with so many rainbow-suspender-wearing, poetry-quoting amateur magicians like Jazz, it's hard for me to take seriously anyone who says he's *too* quirky to be realistic), but I found them, and the book as a whole, playful, charming, and refreshing. It's a whimsical story, but one filled with heart.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy!
bookishjaybird's review against another edition
It just genuinely wasn’t a book for me. The characters and the descriptions of the bullying and the main character and how she looked, her body hair, etc it was upsetting and borderline triggering and not in a way that a book is supposed to be. Especially not a book that I was assuming was going to be fun and lighthearted.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying
Moderate: Fatphobia and Body shaming