Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I watched this movie a couple of years ago, and this book has been on my TBR for the past seven years. My friends and I decided to read it together, I had a copy laying on my bookshelf, so I decided to pick it up. Not going to lie, this was disappointing. I mean, there are so many ways in which you can spin the premise of time-traveling to be exciting, but it really fell flat for me. There were three major problems I have with this story:

1. All of Henry and younger Clare's interactions felt really creepy. Like pedophilia creepy. Especially if the story is from Henry's perspective. The fact that a 41-year old man is having sex with an 18-year old, no matter how legal, really made me question whether I wanted to continue the book.

2. Why is everyone so conveniently wealthy? For me, it felt like everyone could just ignore their adult responsibilities so that Niffenegger could further the romantic aspect of the story. It was incredibly annoying because that was the only part of the story that I felt really indifferent towards.

3. There was absolutely no character development throughout the entire thing. There are people that have told me that they bawled over this book, but I didn't care much about either Clare or Henry. I would have expected Henry to have different life-perspectives and views as he aged and his interactions with Clare, but he is a very flat character. Henry and Clare meet. They fall in love. And all his problems with drugs and women disappear. Really? Cause I don't buy it. I didn't really see their relationship develop outside the fact that they were destined to be together.

Aside from all the problems, the story was original and interesting.

Overall rating: 3.25 stars

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