this was possibly the most anger inducing book i have ever read. i'm going to use this review as therapy and definitely going to spoil some things so if you are by chance reading this and don't want to know shit about shit, i'd stop. outside of spoilers: the book is extremely slow at some parts it becomes unbearable, the narrator is the most boring weirdo ever, and none of the main character's actions has consequences.






okay. spoiler time:

i hate simon with a burning passion. kate should've been the main character of this story. she was way more interesting and i trust her to not fuck up the entire space time continuum by staying back in 1882 because of a romantic interest.

reasons i hate simon/know why he got divorced:
- he messed shit up in the past. continuously. talking about movies and traffic lights and cars. bringing julia from 1882 to his time. going back to live out the rest of his days in her time. causing danziger to never exist. all things you would think would have their own repercussions, right? like, he is really messing with the timeline here. the space time continuum. yet nothing fucking happens. he is fine. everything is fine. there is no consequence to his actions and it makes me so angry.
- the way he treats women. i know for a fact that if he wasn't attracted to julia, then he would've never done anything to stop her marrying jake. he would've let her marry that creep of a man because he wasn't attracted to her. also the way in which he describes women he comes across is so fucking weird. and the way he just totally dropped kate? when she was so much more interesting and also not engaged to be married to another man?
- he is incredibly boring. at first i thought this was because he's the narrator and an artist so maybe he doesn't talk much about himself or his life because he has the artist mind of going into detail about everything but yourself. but i have come to the conclusion it is none of that, actually. he is just fucking lame.

another thing that made me incredibly angry about this book is simon going back to 1882. i would ask why simon loves 1882 so much but that is obvious: he's a white cis-het man. that's not my problem with him going back - i have many more than that.

he just gets to stay in 1882 and settle down with julia? if the project doesn’t exist anymore, then wouldn’t he not be able to be back there? wouldn’t he become a time remnant of sorts? plus, his parents are still going to meet. they have to in order for him to exist. so then he'll just be born again, but the project doesn't exist so he doesn't go back in time and meet julia. so there's another alternative universe that he's somehow managed to create? but that doesn't make sense because it's never implied that one does exist or that he's created one. if that were the case, then danziger probably wouldn't have been so strung up on not changing the past because nothing would really be changed or harmed, just a new universe existing/being created while theirs remained unchanged. there are all these consequences to simon’s actions, but he never faces them and the book never implies they happen. which makes me so mad dude.

also, him going back to 1882 does nothing for me. he has no stakes there - he is simply just a curious mind. kate, though, does. in fact, that's the whole reason they travel back to that time. she wants to see this part of her family history. she wants to learn about herself and the people she loves. simon is just there. he is literally just there. just because he is apart of the project. also, it takes simon a few tries to time travel and kate just does it in one. I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY SHE WASNT THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!! i also don't understand why they didn't include her in the project when they discover she can time travel too!!! like, this project is supposed to be very difficult to get into and you have to have all these skills and this special mind for it and i am somehow supposed to believe that simon makes it in WITHOUT TIME TRAVELING at first but they don't immediately snatch up kate - who literally time travelled on the first try successfully. they tell simon to just not bring her again? which i have multiple issues with. 1.) they can't stop kate from time travelling? with the way time travel works it's all by self hypnosis, so why would they let someone who can time travel willy nilly into the world when they are so concerned with not messing up the timeline? they don't mention hypnotizing her into forgetting how to time travel, so really what the fuck is up with this project? who is running this shit? 2.) simon has no reason to be in 1882. kate being there is much more interesting than simon by himself. i truly could not give less than a shit about simon being there because NOTHING MATTERS. it mattered to kate, so simon was like "yeah let's go!" but then he drops her as soon as he goes back by himself for the first time. like i don't care about simon as a character at all. he's painfully boring and horribly creepy and racist and sexist and weird. I CARED ABOUT KATE. THAT'S IT.

i could go on and on about how mad this book made me. but i won't. i will end on these notes: danziger is the real victim, kate should've been the main character, and simon may not know why he got divorced but i certainly do. that's all i can say about this book. i hate myself.

Anyone who loved the movie "Somewhere in Time" should read this....you know who you are! ;)

I usually love time travel books, but this one not so much. There's only so much overdone detail that I can take and in this book the detail is hugely overbearing and in places gets in the way of the story, so much so I ended up scan-reading, just to keep the story going. I've seen that there is a sequel, but sorry, once is more than enough for me.

I love time travel stories. This one was good.

Great time traveling book. I've read this book numerous times. The time traveling in here works just like you wish the force would work...(if you just think hard enough maybe you can switch off the bedroom light from the bed)...if you just think hard enough, immerse yourself in the time period you want to go to wearing the clothes living in an apartment decorated the way it should be you'll travel back in time, cuz time is only relative. And if you happen to fall in love while time traveling at least you can go back to see her. Spread through out the book are actual photographs of NYC at the time that the main character travels back to, lends a bit of realism to the book. Very interesting story.

This book did not disappoint. I loved the details and even illustrations of old New York, and had fun imagining it all in place of the New York I grew up in and still visit. The plot was imaginative and believable, but I wish the protagonist's character was fleshed out a little more. All told, I had a hard time putting it down, and thought about it during the day, and looked forward to reading it every evening - signs of a great book!!! I'm sad that it's done!

Jack Finney will always be my absolute favorite author. There are so many levels to his stories. I love his tone and find his whole approach really unique. Time & Again was the first Finney I read and it remains one of my absolute favorites. Some may be put off by the details, but I felt like they really gave you a sense of the world Si Morley is in. The mysteries are tight and clever, the characters are fresh and relatable... I loved this book from start to finish.

We discuss this further in a special Sci-Fi episode of the All the Books Show.
https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/episode-201-sci-fi-books

need to re-read, I think. I first read it for a college history course, and still have it.

3.5 stars. It was okay, just didn't grab me the way I thought it would, and I had a hard time believing the relationship between the two main characters.