I should start off by saying that this book definitely was not my cup of tea and it I wasn't reading it for book club, I probably would not have picked this book up at all. I can't say that I hated the book (I DID rate it 3 stars after all), but there were enough things I disliked about it that made the reading experience less than enjoyable for me. The two biggest problems I saw were in the writing and structure of the book (two things that matter a great deal to me when I'm reading fiction, so that's where I tend to pay more attention). I also didn't like any of the characters much either -- especially the two main characters Henry and Clare -- which in large part was due to the way the characters were written. I found it difficult to develop any type of emotional attachment to any of the characters, which I know sounds awful given the many hardships the characters go through in the story, but I just wasn't able to "feel" for them for some unexplainable reason.
For me, this book was an extremely tedious read, to the point that I actually set the book aside 3 different times while reading so I could finish other books that ended up being way more "worthy" reads. I felt that the pacing of the book was way too slow and oftentimes, the story went absolutely nowhere. A large part of this had to do with the writing being very inconsistent – at times, the writing was choppy, with a whole paragraph consisting of short, and sometimes incomplete, sentences, but then the next paragraph would have super long sentences and descriptions, then a few paragraphs later, it would be choppy again. Speaking of descriptions, that was another area which, looking at some of the reviews, I wasn't the only one who felt was problematic. Normally, I have no problem with authors being descriptive, as long as it is done properly and there is an identifiable purpose to being overly-descriptive – for example, to establish setting or to pull the reader into the characters' worlds or to relay particular characters' emotions, train of thought, etc. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those cases, at least not for me. Throughout the book, the author often went into excruciating detail about the smallest of things that, for the most part, did nothing to further the plot (i.e. the grocery lists, detailed descriptions of food, the steps that Clare would take when putting together an art project, etc.). There were also entire swaths of dialogue between characters (i.e.: "…there is a knock at the door, Henry says, 'Come in', the door opens…" ) as well as quite a few scenes that I felt were meaningless, to the point that I wondered (more often than not) why the author even bothered to put those scenes in there (one example that sticks out is that scene at a party where Henry was having a detailed discussion with some strangers about what constitutes "punk" and "rock" and then proceeds to rattle off a list of rock (punk?) bands that they should be listening to). To me, all these extraneous descriptions, scenes, dialogue, etc. felt like 'unnecessary fluff' that seemed to serve no purpose other than to make the book way longer than it needed to be (my version was 530 pages). I honestly feel that if all the unnecessary stuff was cut from the book, it could've probably been pared down to around 350 pages or so).
I also found the way the book was structured to be very distracting – but this could just be me not understanding (or appreciating) the author's way of telling the story. The narrative goes back and forth in time, which is not a problem, since a lot of books do this and usually it just takes a little bit of slowing down the reading and sometimes checking back a few pages to see where the previous time period left off. The problem with the narrative here is that it doesn't simply switch back and forth between time periods – rather, it mixes past, present, and future sporadically throughout the book. Even though each chapter was labeled with the dates and characters involved as well as their ages at the time, I still found it extremely hard to follow the narrative, mostly because the order with which the author places many of the events that occur didn't really make sense. It also didn't help that some of the scenarios were too far-fetched (which I guess should be expected given this book is about time travel and therefore already puts it into 'science fiction' territory). Perhaps I'm just not keen on time-travel and science fiction stuff but I truly felt confused with all the instances of the characters appearing with different "versions" of other characters (i.e. the different versions of Clare that didn't always match up with the different versions of Henry) or, in some cases, the same character appearing in "duplicate" form (i.e. Henry's current self with his past self or future self). I actually spent so much time trying to sort out which Henry and which Clare was narrating each section that I ended up not paying much attention to the story itself (which was another reason why I wasn't able to relate to any of the characters on an emotional level – I could barely keep up with who was who)! I think if the author had structured the book differently, like in a way that was less distracting, I may have been able to focus on the story itself and perhaps actually find something to enjoy about it.
Overall, despite the issues I talk about above, I don't feel that this book was a complete lost cause (which I guess is obvious since I chose to give 3 stars instead of 1 or 2). It was definitely readable and some sections I would even say were entertaining. However, taken as a whole, the story didn't work for me. Even when I tried approaching it from a "contemporary romance" point of view, the story still fell flat for me, as I felt emotionally detached from the characters and didn't feel anything for anyone except for maybe one or two minor characters. While I don't really feel it is appropriate for me to comment on whether I would recommend this book or not (it didn't work for me but perhaps it might work for others), I know for sure that this is one book I wouldn't want to spend time reading again.
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