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cheye13's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, and Murder
Moderate: Eating disorder, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Sexual content, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Animal death, Cancer, Violence, Stalking, and Alcohol
Many mental illnesses are mentioned or alluded to, but the specific illnesses of main characters are PTSD and Bipolar Disordermandkips's review against another edition
- 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
4.0
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, and Murder
Moderate: Eating disorder, Infidelity, Self harm, and Grief
Minor: Gun violence, Homophobia, and Racism
therainbowshelf's review against another edition
- 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
đThe Gist đ: Time travel takes the mystery out of everything, including death. It also makes it possible to solve certain crimes. When a woman in her 80s is murdered in a locked room, her death spawns am investigation that stretches across time.
đRepresentationđ: wlw mc, bipoc mc and sc, senior mc
đ For readers looking for đ: interesting time travel, mystery, a touch of romance
Graphic: Ableism, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, Car accident, Death of parent, and Murder
Moderate: Sexual content
aardwyrm's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Dialogue is rather strangely arranged, with paragraph breaks in all the wrong places. Stylistically, this works to make the act of reading a sort of constant time travel itself. You're forever tracking back and forth to figure out who's talking. While it works on a meta level, the affectation does make reading kind of a weird mechanical experience.
Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Death, Eating disorder, Gun violence, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Violence, Medical content, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail
norwegianforestreader's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Moderate: Animal death, Bullying, Cancer, Cursing, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Racism, Self harm, Toxic relationship, Blood, Grief, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pregnancy, and Alcohol
lilifane's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It can be a little confusing, and I didn't do myself any favour by listening to the audiobook, but I still loved it so so much. (Also, I really enjoyed the audiobook) So it's not primarily a book about time travels but more about the people who invented it and the ones who used it. About long term effects time travel may have on the psyche. About friendship, family, love and murder. Yeah, there is also a murder mystery to be solved.
It's also really diverse and feminist (almost the entire cast of characters is female).
Graphic: Death, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Blood, Grief, and Murder
angelbabe_cj's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Graphic: Death, Eating disorder, Gun violence, and Death of parent
Moderate: Infidelity, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, and Grief
Minor: Homophobia
whirl's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
Also love that there is a complete gender reversal from the usual stereotypes: anyone important to the story is female, there is only a handful of male characters and theyâre only there in supporting roles. The fact that this stands out is a good example of why we need more books like this!
Moderate: Death, Mental illness, and Murder
Minor: Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Infidelity, Racism, Self harm, Forced institutionalization, and Grief
tachyondecay's review against another edition
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
There are two main characters: Ruby and Odette. Ruby is the granddaughter of Barbara, one of the four women who invented time travel in the 1960s. Barbara fell out with her fellow inventors after she had a breakdown on national television, so Ruby and her mother have always lived at a distance from the world of time travel. This changes in big ways, for a mysterious note from the future prompts Ruby to look into the Time Travel Conclave. Odette, on the other hand, thinks the Conclave holds the answer to what killed a dead woman she discovered in the basement of a museum. She joins up to look for those answers, but of course, the reality is much more wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey!
Mascarenhas follows a block time, self-consistent approach to time travel: if you know the future, you are doomed to complete it, no paradoxes allowed. She delves a little into what this does to time travellersâ attitudes towards deaths of loved onesâhow do you grieve someone who is accessible to you by travelling to the past? Similarly, how do you live a life when you know the outcomeâyour date of death, how you die, who your friends and partners are at that time? We humans are so accustomed to the linearity of our time, and to the arrow of time being such that we know our past absolutely yet our future in no true senseâwhat would time travel, really, do to us? (It seems strange to me that Ruby is a therapist, yet she spends little enough time ruminating on this herself.) I, for one, do not want to know how or when I die. I like that uncertainty.
Time travel affects more than just romantic relationships. The relationships people have with Margaret Norton, the Conclaveâs inaugural director, are an interesting example. Apparently she gets nastier as she gets older, and many characters remark that they prefer dealing with her younger selves. What would a job be like if you could talk to your boss across different time periods?
Mascarenhas never actually takes us on a time travel adventure. She offers up interesting tidbits on how our society has evolved after a few centuries of time travel. Perhaps the most tantalizing is that itâs impossible to travel beyond 2267, as if the time travel machines just disappear after that. Oooh, what a cool mystery! But thatâs never brought up againâand in a weird continuity error any editor should have caught, they keep mentioning how time travel justice is inspired by âtwenty-fourth century British law,â even though the 2267 cap is in the twenty-third century. Oops.
Speaking of errors, Iâm not sure if this is a stylistic faux pas or a typesetting issue, but the dialogue habitually runs togetherâthe speaker changing mid-paragraph. This kind of thing annoys the hell out of me, and honestly there were moments I wanted to put down this book simply because of that habit.
So, in short, this book could have used another editing pass, I think.
The main plots are all well and good, but in the end I guess I was just hoping for more after that set-up. I feel like there are more stories, better stories, more interesting stories happening here, yet we are on the periphery looking inwards with Ruby and Odette. Furthermore, while I give Mascarenhas due credit for attempting to use her time travel framework to tell the story in a non-linear yet comprehensive way, I wish she had taken more risks. I wonder if this is because this book attempts to be a more âliteraryâ approach to time travel? In any case, The Pyschology of Time Travel has a great premise, but the story itself and the characters within fall flat for me.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, and Medical content
Moderate: Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, and Terminal illness
Minor: Cancer and Racism