The Time Traveler's Wife

I recently finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife and decided to write a short review of it on my Goodreads profile. I have not written a book review in a long time, so pardon me if I'm rusty / not that great at it. In short, I liked it and would recommend it. :]

I started out expecting I would like this book and I was not disappointed. Time travel is always interesting to me and I'm a bit of a softy for a good love story.

I enjoyed the way the story was laid out, switching between the perspectives of Henry and Clare. The timeline of the story is mostly chronological (from Clare's perspective), but there are parts of the past and future as Henry time travels. These parts provide interesting foreshadowing or delayed explanation of events. The dates and ages of the characters are announced before each section to help you keep track of things.

The story does not delve too far into the how of time travel, so it's not overly geeky or sci-fi in that way. Henry cannot control when or where he time travels to; it happens randomly and he can not bring anything with him, including clothes.

The story is set in Chicago and a lot of landmarks and street names are used at times. I enjoyed this level of detail; I'm familiar with a lot of the places and it helped to anchor the story in reality. Many band names are referenced, too. This level of detail might be off-putting to some, but I never felt like it was just padding or name-dropping.

There were several sex scenes and they were a bit graphic at times. I was not surprised by this, but I think the story could have done fine with them toned down. There is a fair bit of foul language, too. Neither of these things particularly bothered me or kept me from enjoying the story; I mention them in case they are concerns for readers.

I definitely connected emotionally with the story, feeling the highs and lows with the characters. Because of that and the interesting timeline, it held my interest all the way through and I would recommend reading it.

P.S. Goodreads is fun; I like being able to keep track of my reading status, seeing what friends are reading, and getting recommendations. Feel free to add me.