TL;DR Review: Slow beginning ratcheting up to a high-suspense ending. An easy-reading time travel novel light on science and high on emotions.
Synopsis:
Rule One: Travel can only occur to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.
In this riveting science fiction novel from acclaimed author Philip Fracassi, a scientist has unlocked the mysteries of time travel. This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.
Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She’s built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler’s lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it’s not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
After Beth’s husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.
Full Review:
I’ve always enjoyed a well-crafted time travel novel with high stakes and complex science. While this one delivers neither, that doesn’t stop it from being an otherwise enjoyable read!
The story follows Beth Darlow, the woman who, along with her deceased husband, unlocked the secret of time travel. Her Great Machine has the ability to cast the traveler back to any single point in their past and keep them there for 90 seconds.
On the opening page, we see where she winds up: the day where her parents and sister died in a helicopter crash. No happy memories here, clearly.
As the story opens, we learn of Beth’s work at the requisite all-power tech conglomerate funding the research. Thanks to a clever writing device—Beth is interviewed by a reporter for a magazine piece—we’re given a “dumbed down” explanation of the science (which felt a bit too hand-wavey for my taste, but I’m no quantum physicist, so what do I know?) driving the technology. That’s enough for us to have a solid foundation of how this form of time travel works and what the stakes are.
With that established, we begin to be drawn deeper into the mystery and suspense of it all. The mysterious appearance of her dead husband, only for him to vanish again. Strange dreams that feel all too real. Her daughter’s cryptic statements. Every new addition ratchets up the thrills until we know that something strange is going on, and now we just have to keep reading to find out what.
Between the ever-rising stakes, the increasing tension, and the short, snappy chapters, this book ended up being incredibly easy to read. I had no trouble reading “just one more” because I wanted to see where everything was going and to get more and more answers.
The real emotional stakes kick into high gear at around the 75% mark, and from that point, I was dying to see how Beth was going to fix everything.
I did see the ending coming from pretty far off, but that didn’t make it any less emotionally satisfying when everything was wrapped up neatly.
While it’s not the most epic or complex sci-fi time travel book I’ve ever read, I enjoyed it enough that I would gladly recommend it to anyone looking for a worthwhile time travel read. A solid story that you will have no trouble getting through, guaranteed!
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