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A review by marlinspirkhall
The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
adventurous
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- 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
(review from January 2020)
Oh my God. I didn't have any idea what to expect going into this, and then this book gave me so much diversity, an engaging plot, fantastic characters and amazing writing. I fucking adored it. I asked my dad if he deliberately got me a book which festured lesbian and bisexual women as main characters and he said he just stumbled across it in the sci fi section at a bookstore.
This book really inspired me and gave me lots of writing steam for this year, and I'll definitely be rereading it at some point. It took me just over a week to read and I remember bringing it to work one day, though I didn't get that far with it during my short lunch break. My phone battery started going on the fritz about this time, too, so it was nice to have something to do other than plug it in to charge and pray for the best.
Oh my God. I didn't have any idea what to expect going into this, and then this book gave me so much diversity, an engaging plot, fantastic characters and amazing writing. I fucking adored it. I asked my dad if he deliberately got me a book which festured lesbian and bisexual women as main characters and he said he just stumbled across it in the sci fi section at a bookstore.
This book really inspired me and gave me lots of writing steam for this year, and I'll definitely be rereading it at some point. It took me just over a week to read and I remember bringing it to work one day, though I didn't get that far with it during my short lunch break. My phone battery started going on the fritz about this time, too, so it was nice to have something to do other than plug it in to charge and pray for the best.
Moderate: Eating disorder, Torture, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Biphobia, Homophobia, Self harm, Blood, and Fire/Fire injury
Toxic Friendship: This is pretty integral to the book- one character is treated badly by the others, and deliberately exluded.
Hazing, Torture: In order to join the time-travellers, there are extensive hazing techniques in place, which includes playing the "Angel Of Death" - whereby a character must tell a child that her father is about to die, terrifying her (and traumatising her for life).
Biphobia/homophobia: Bisexual character discusses "avoiding certain timelines" because there are times in the future where society is biphobic. She describes it as "one step forwards one step back", which is certainly not a hopeful view of the future.
Fire/Fire Injury, Self harm: Time travellers have seen that they will get injured in an accident in the future, and therefore willingly step into time machines which they know are about to explode.
Eating disorder: A character develops a specific fixation where she only feels able to eat a specific time and place, so there are several versions of herself gathered in the park eating their packed lunches. This is dealt with gently in the plot, but it is a fairly important checkpoint.