This story is so sloooow. 
The premise is interesting, and the time traveling method is unique. 
The plot unravels way to alow, the intro takes too much time, and the super detailed descriptions of every each and every detail, made me feel that listening in twoce the speed wasn't fast enough. 
Surprisingly, the end was brilliant. 

saw this at the used bookstore with my mom and she remembered that she really liked it when she was younger and the first chapter drew me in so we got it....but i didn't really enjoy. i enjoyed the beginning but the longer i spent with this book the less i liked it (and it took a while because i couldn't hold it all the way open while reading for fear of pages falling out).

things i liked:
- page 388 anti-draft sentiments. yess call out the military on being evil!!!!!!
- the method of time travel reallly scratched my brain right. like on one hand i thought scientifically it was total nonsense....but on the other hand i've always felt like If I Just Concentrate Hard Enough I COULD Teleport/Do This Spell/Etc and i really liked it for indulging that secret belief. 
- the focus on the details and everyday when he time travelled. the atmosphere was quite nice as well. 
-

when julia came to the future !!! (for the most part)

things i found fascinating:
- the description of faces and people in the 1880s as being so much more alive than people in 1970. like oh we've always just longed for the past huh. because someone from today could time travel back to 1970 and say the exact same thing. and to be honest what business do you have saying people were chronically bored in 1970 when they didn't even have phones yet. (what business do i have saying people weren't bored then when i was born in 2004.)

things i didn't like:
-

the crazy paradox at the end hellooo. i don't like that. like it was kind of satisfying as an ending except for the fact that if danziger wasn't born to teach si how to time travel he couldn't time travel back to stop him from being born so he would be born and he would time travel and he would stop him from beign born and on and on i don't like when plots hinge on paradoxes like this.

- si was incredibly forgettable as a main character
- kate was TOTALLY abandoned by the narrative. 
- THE DESCRIPTIONS OF JULIA. do we need a description of her clothes to mention that you never thought a skirt with a bustle could be attractive but it worked quite well on her. does your first reaction to her

in modern clothes

have to be "As I'd suspected, she had a fine figure." LIKE HELLO?? reallly icky i must say. there were some other phrases that didn't age so well but it was mostly these male-gazey things that bugged me the most. 
- and if you know me you'll know this PAINS me to say...but the illustrations did nothing for me. the photos were ok. i didn't like that the drawings were all so extremely different from one another but meant to be from the same person. and i thought that something abt the face in the portrait of julia looked very 70s. idk. 

i think the concept of this book was what drew me to it, but i wasn’t a big fan of the way it was written. si was an insufferable character and made it difficult for me to actually enjoy him as a narrator. i think it was still cool to see the time traveling to modern day new york and 19th century new york, especially because it’s something we all think about at one point when we visit big cities. what would new york look like back then? i think some scenes could have been condensed into shorter pages and still have the same impact, because a few parts of the book started making me bored. this was an okay read overall. 3/5 stars