ParaNormalRomance.org

"A true test of love throughout a lifetime"

I must admit, as an avid reader of romance, and professing to love time travel, I didn't quite know what to think when my boyfriend gave me a copy of a mainstream novel that was a "Today Show Book Club" recommended novel. Brain translation: recommended by Oprah or Good Morning America. If the entirety of America is reading this book, it can't really be that much of a romance, or can it?

Much to my surprise, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE is a rare gem that draws you into the life of Clare and Henry. Except rather than reading like a movie, it is more like a documentary. Clare meets Henry when she is six (and he is much older) but when Henry meets her for the first time, he is 28 (and at the time, Clare is 20). The days are all date stamped and give you the ages of our leading couple and an outline of the events that transpired on the date. Quite frequently you get information from both of their perspectives. Time expands and contracts and Henry travels forward and backward in time, some times causing him to encounter himself.

While some reviewers found her writing style to lack in details and would have liked more information about the secondary characters, I really thought her ingenious. There are so many small details that are easy to overlook but make you go "huh?" that later on in the story make sense. I felt Clare and Henry were solid characters as well as very believable. Just like I felt the information provided about the secondary characters was enough to make them solid and believable as our couples' best friends, but their lives don't overshadow and take over the story; they become more real because they have their own reality rather than are attached by strings to the main characters.

I am amazed with Clare. How many women can honestly say they have loved the man they will marry/did marry essentially their whole life? Having Henry pop in and out of her life, it was more like she fell in love with her childhood imaginary best friend...except he wasn't imaginary, he just hadn't met her yet. Then, the patience she has with Henry is amazing, because he can't control the time travel and quite frequently time travels when stressed...let your imagination fill in the blanks here!

Henry is a true and tragic romantic hero. Someone surrounded with an enormous secret (that miraculously few know about), whose life is constantly in danger (time traveling naked into the middle of a blizzard, or how-a- bout a back alley anyone?). He is devoted to Clare, and yet, he cannot prevent the time traveling. At the same time he still wants to have a normal marriage, job and life in general. I have to admit, I am amazed with his self control to not abuse his time travel abilities in regards to knowing the future.

While Clare and Henry are in deeply in love, their lives are not glossed over and their emotions are so real and raw. The story had me laughing so hard and then crying at the end. But, the key is if you can travel through time, has the story really ended?

THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE is such a good book and one you won't want to miss.

Reviewed by Cynthia Eckert
Posted March 16, 2005

Reviewed by Cynthia Eckert
Posted November 22, 2006

Hardcover rel: MacAdam/Cage Publishing; Today Show Book Club edition (September 17, 2003) - ISBN: 1931561648

The Time Traveler's Wife, is the story of Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time, pulled to moments of emotional gravity in his life, past and future. His disappearances are spontaneous, his experiences unpredictable, alternately harrowing and amusing.

The Time Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. Clare and Henry attempt to live normal lives, pursuing familiar goals—steady jobs, good friends, children of their own. All of this is threatened by something they can neither prevent nor control.