Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

What would you do if you could time travel? Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Not always.

Clare has known Henry since she was 6. She does not know, however, what his life was like before the age of 28. In The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, a young girl discovers a new friend at a meadow by her house. Henry and Clare immediately became friends. Only one problem, he had no control over when, and for how long, he would disappear...yep, leave. Vanish. Pull a Houdini. And when he came back, he was different ages. He sometimes was with Clare when he was 25, and at other times, 36. Having been to the future, Henry knows all about how lovely his future with Clare will be. Because of messing up any future events, he is not supposed to tell Clare any of what is to come. However, he sometimes slips. He eventually goes on to tell her that he will meet her again when she is older and that they will get married.

The next time Henry and Clare meet again after her childhood is at the Newberry Library in downtown Chicago. After that, the romance begins. They fall in love and get married.

Okay, so the summary was short. That's because going into any of what happened in the story would be all too confusing. I found that this book made me think in having to figure out exactly what was going on. It jumped around a little too much for me to keep up. But, I enjoyed the book a lot. A friend of mine had a few boxes of books that she was getting rid of, so I took this one. I was glad I did, too, because I absolutely loved the ideas presented in the book. The novel is time travel with a twist. A little bit of science fiction, a looooot of romance. The way the writing is set up is that one person, either Clare or Henry, will have an entry and the top line will say the date and age of each character. Henry may be 36 while Clare is only 16, for example. I loved the genius behind that type of writing. If there are other books out there written like this, I'd love to read some others. I did not like the ending or some of the ideas of life after death....oops, that was a spoiler, sorry. I gave this book a 4 out of 5 stars, because it was a book that I could not put down, while it was still lacking.