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You Had Me at "Time Travel" I love a time-travel story in any genre, and this Greedy Reading List offers a little of everything: light fiction/rom-com, mystery, fantasy, contemporary fiction, and science fiction. Time-travel and time shifts allow a story to go places it otherwise never could, allowing for unusual perspective, second chances, and realizations. Books that play with time almost always go straight on my to-read list. If you're intrigued by time-travel stories, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore and Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories . Are there any stories you love that play with time? 01 One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston McQuiston's love letter to New York offers charming song references, LGBTQ love, steamy scenes, character growth--and an irresistible playing-with-time element. In One Last Stop , twenty-three-year-old August keeps to herself--she's kind of cynical, she doesn't have a lot of friends, and she's holding true to form after her recent move to New York. Her mother dedicated her life to searching for her own brother, who disappeared decades ago, and enlisted daughter August in her obsessive research and in her driven questioning of even the most tangentially connected potential contacts in order to try to find out what happened. One Last Stop plays with time in a really fun, interesting way, and through the time-jump premise McQuiston's characters explore loyalty, love, connection, and heartbreak in poignant, funny, irresistible ways. The book revels in wonderful LGBTQ love and tons of sexiness; fantastic New York-centric details; and enough musical references that multiple Spotify playlists exist that are inspired by the songs in the book. For my full review of this book, check out One Last Stop . 02 The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell In Lisa Maxwell's The Last Magician , a smart master thief bends time and finds her loyalties divided in turn-of-the-century New York. I appreciated the character of Esta as a smart master thief who can bend time, and I loved the 1901 New York setting, Dolph Saunders as a kindly magical mobster, Viola as a lesbian tough girl (with a heart of gold!) who's a genius with knives, and Harte Darrigan as a stage (and actual) magician whose loyalties are difficult to pin down. Add in the Brink as a method of controlling those with magic, the Book and its unclear powers, and the discriminatory, powerful, and dangerous Order and there's a steady, sinister underlying feel to the story. I don't think it benefited me to listen to The Last Magician , the first in Maxwell's series, as an audiobook, what with the jumps through time; varied points of view; layered disloyalties, misdirections, and motivations; and the extensive double-crossing. Some of the twists at the end felt implausible, but others wrapped up frustrating revelations in satisfying ways. For my full review of this book, check out The Last Magician . 03 Lost in Time by A.G. Riddle A.G. Riddle's time-travel story centers around reconciling the inability to change what has already occurred, but the necessity of doing so to save loved ones. With a twist! When we created Absalom, we weren't trying to build a time machine. We were trying to build a machine that saved our families. In A.G. Riddle's 450-page multiple-timeline story Lost in Time , a group of scientists have developed a device called Absalom. First intended to revolutionize shipping, its limitations and its vast possibilities lead to a new purpose: to send dangerous criminals back in time. When Sam, one of the creators of the system, is framed for the murder of another creator, he finds himself about to be sent back in his own creation as punishment. But his physicist friends are determined to try to get him back to the present again somehow. If only Sam had had time to do more than give himself a crash course in reading about the Triassic Period (weather, Pangea, dinosaur identification) or to hear his friends' ambitious plan for his return before being whisked back in time. For my full review of this book, check out Lost in Time . 04 Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister Gillian McAllister offers a smart, intriguing, twisty story that plays with time and offers second chances, revelations, betrayals, deep connections, and an unusual route to uncovering the truth. I loved it. Gillian McAllister's twisty mystery begins with a mother awaiting her teenage son's return home late one night. She peers out the window to see him walking down the street--then she sees that he is armed, and to her horror, she sees him kill another man on the street. But when she awakens the next morning bracing to face the living nightmare her family has begun living in, she's relieved to find that her son hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't been arrested, and in fact, none of last night's events have happened after all. She must be losing her mind. But she knows that last night was real. Somehow she's reliving yesterday again. Can she shift the future by changing the past? Wrong Place, Wrong Time offers a smart, mind-bending structure that is complex and interesting but not difficult to follow. McAllister develops her characters fully and uses the time jumps wonderfully--to explore relationships, truth-telling and lies, assumptions, terrible realizations, and heartwarming reassurances. For my full review of this book, check out Wrong Place, Wrong Time . 05 This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub Straub offers a story that plays with time, explores sentimental moments, offers do-overs, and sweeps the reader into a love-filled, hopeful heartbreaker of a tale. On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s job, apartment, and love life are solidly okay. The only dark spot in her life is her father’s grave illness. When she wakes up the next morning...it’s her 16th birthday again. And it isn't just that being in her teen body again shocks her, or that seeing her high school crush is jarring. It's incredible to see her healthy, vital, young dad. This Time Tomorrow indulged my own personal desire for sentimentality, while also emphasizing the value of cutting to the heart of a situation without wasting time. The story offers up lots of loving moments as well as perfectly imperfect decisions and mistakes. The story is heartbreaking and lovely in its ultimate insistence that one must let go of the past. This was one of my favorite reads of the year last year. For my full review of this book, please see This Time Tomorrow . 06 Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel In this nested story that spans centuries, Mandel explores a pandemic, moon colonization, the universal connection of music, the temptation to change the past, portals and time loops, loyalty, fear, love, and wonder. In this science fiction novel, Mandel plays with time and time travel as well as mysteries surrounding what may be a portal linking individuals through time. Mandel explores an emerging pandemic in a future with a colonized moon, considers the universal connection of music, and digs into the difficulty and danger in changing the past. But all of these players and times feel in place mainly to serve as a structure to surround our true main protagonist, Gaspary, and we see the most depth and development and change; loyalty and love and grief; wonder and danger; resignation and hope in his portion of the story. This was where I was captivated and delighted and emotionally engaged. This book appeared on the Greedy Reading List Six More Science Fiction Reads I Loved in the Past Year . Click here for my review of Mandel's Station Eleven . For my full review of this book, please check out Sea of Tranquility .

More Time-Travel Adventures I love a book that plays with time--the possibilities of trying things a different way, the second chances, the peeks into what might have been or what really occurred. My first Greedy Reading List of books that focused on this theme was Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore, which I followed with Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore. You might also like the books on the list Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories. Here are six more novels across genres that kept me hooked on their time-travel stories. Have you read any of these? If so, I'd love to hear what you thought. Do you have any favorite books that involve time travel? 01 See You Yesterday by Rebecca Lynn Solomon Rachel Lynn Solomon crafts another sweet, quirky, funny, romantic young adult story that plays with time and is centered around irresistibly imperfect characters. In See You Yesterday, Rachel Lynn Solomon explores the first day of college for Barrett Bloom, who desperately needs a fresh start. But on day one, Barrett's ruthlessly straightforward manner, defensive way of keeping others at a distance, and habit of speaking harsh truths before she stops to think seem destined to lead her to misstep and thwart her own chances of success and happiness. After being involved in multiple disasters in only her first day of classes, she fears college may become a ruination on par with the end of her high school career. She wakes up the next day...and finds that she's reliving her first day of college. She has the incredible chance to make the same decisions or to consider her choices and do things differently. The following morning, she gets yet another chance at reliving her first day. And there's an interesting boy she keeps running into, regardless of which paths and options she alters. He keeps challenging her and seems to know her somehow. Barrett can't decide if this time loop is a dream come true--or a living nightmare. I love Rachel Lynn Solomon's stories, and I loved this story of Barrett and Miles and youthful adventure and finding themselves and discovering how to be vulnerable and ALL of it. Hook, line, and sinker. Click here for my full review of See You Yesterday. 02 The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson Johnson offers a wonderfully imperfect heroine and her fascinating journeys through the multiverse, her various lives, and her alternate selves in this science fiction debut. Cara is one of a dwindling number of traversers. She can travel through the multiverse, but only to worlds where another version of herself no longer exists. Her other selves seem uncannily apt to die, so Cara is able to visit 372 other Earths where her counterparts are no longer living. But when one of Cara's eight remaining selves mysteriously dies while she is world walking, shocking secrets are revealed that connect various worlds and shake Cara to her core. She must cobble together the various bits of knowledge and savviness she's gained through tracing the steps of her many other selves if she's going to stand any chance of outsmarting the canny and intelligent Adam Bosch--a man who will otherwise almost certainly be the source of her undoing. Cara isn't superhuman; she's imperfect, sometimes selfish, tough, and occasionally she's wonderfully vulnerable. I loved her as an unlikely heroine, and I loved that it wasn't too easy for her to attempt to address complex issues within the multiverse. For my full review of this book, please see The Space Between Worlds. 03 In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren In a Holidaze is a romantic holiday time twist with sexy interludes and a reliably happy ending. Twentysomething Mae is spending the holidays yet again with her parents' college friends and their families. She's not satisfied in her job, she's unwillingly single, she still lives with her parents--and she just kissed the wrong boy, the younger brother of her true obsession. In despair about having had a rotten holiday and realizing that future holidays at her favorite place in the world are now in jeopardy, Mae makes a plea to the universe to show her what would truly make her happy. Suddenly she's plunged back in time to begin the holiday anew and try to get things right, Groundhog Day-style. I fought a little irritation at the start with what felt like too-cute in-process inside jokes between the characters--I'd rather watch interpersonal intimacies unfold than be thrust into scenes serving as shorthand for "this is idyllic and you should love it." Click here for my full review of In a Holidaze. 04 One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle Rebecca Serle's love letter to Italy plays with time to allow a grieving young woman to know her mother at her same age, inspiring heartwarming realizations. Katy is deeply grieving while questioning her own life, including her marriage to a kind man. She is determined to take the trip to Italy she and her mother had optimistically planned during her mom's illness, and she's set on revisiting the places her mom has raved about since Katy was a child. Katy also begins to recognize what the reader might notice early on: that her intense lifetime reliance on her mother in all areas of her life has left her without the benefit of independence, decision-making, and the strength that autonomy (and mistakes) build in a person. When Katy wakes up one day faced with her actual own mother standing in her hotel lobby in the prime of her youth, she wonders if she's hallucinating. But it all seems so real. As days pass, Katy realizes she seems to have been been gifted with an opportunity to know her mother in a way that seemed impossible. And if she can cope with her own sadness and dive into the unfathomable experience, she just might learn valuable lessons about herself and her own character too. For my full review, check out One Italian Summer. 05 Chosen Ones (Chosen Ones #1) by Veronica Roth Sloane is a perfectly imperfect heroine and things aren't entirely what they seem in Roth's first novel for adults. Things aren’t entirely what they seem in Veronica Roth’s version of Earth in Chosen Ones, both in terms of heroes' and villains’ roles as well as these characters’ understanding (and gaps in understanding) the situation at hand. Sloane is a perfectly imperfect heroine. She’s expected to play the games of the media and stick fast to the identity that her fame as a Chosen One has thrust upon her. But she is incapable of BS and full of rage, fear, unquenched revenge fantasies, vulnerability, and the sometimes inconvenient drive to live truthfully and fully. Roth could have potentially pulled back on the messy, complicated, partial resolution among multiple worlds toward the end for a simpler step forward but didn’t take an easier way out. I’m not sure where it leaves us for the second book, but I can’t wait to find out. For my full review of this book, see Chosen Ones. 06 Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson Robots, time travel, teen angst, and this gorgeous cover. Yes to all of this. I didn't anticipate the twists Johnson provides, and I was delighted by each of them. Goddess in the Machine is more than just a gorgeous cover. Lora Beth Johnson had me hooked immediately by the premise and Andra's voice. Teenage Andra finally wakes up after being cryogenically preserved for a century-long journey to a new planet. She's a little creaky and sore, sure, but she's ready to be reunited with the team, which includes her mother and the rest of her family, plus many others involved in the complex project. They'll begin the work of bravely populating and building a new life on this planet. Except...Andra soon realizes she wasn't sleeping for 100 years. She was asleep for 1,000. The people, terrain, and language are not what she studied for or expected, everyone she once knew has already lived and died--oh, and the general population, whoever they are, thinks she's a goddess, and they've been waiting excitedly for her to wake up and save them. I didn't anticipate the twist/double twist here, and I loved being surprised again and again. For my full review, please see Goddess in the Machine.

You Had Me at "Time Travel" I love a time-travel story in any genre. This Greedy Reading List offers a little of everything: light fiction/rom-com, mystery, fantasy, contemporary fiction, and science fiction. Time-travel and time shifts allow the story to go places it otherwise never could, allowing for unusual perspective, second chances, and realizations. Books that play with time almost always go straight on my to-read list. If you're intrigued by time-travel stories, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore and Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories. Are there any stories you love that play with time? 01 One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston McQuiston's love letter to New York offers charming song references, LGBTQ love, steamy scenes, character growth--and an irresistible playing-with-time element. In One Last Stop, twenty-three-year-old August keeps to herself--she's kind of cynical, she doesn't have a lot of friends, and she's holding true to form after her recent move to New York. Her mother dedicated her life to searching for her own brother, who disappeared decades ago, and enlisted daughter August in her obsessive research and in her driven questioning of even the most tangentially connected potential contacts in order to try to find out what happened. One Last Stop plays with time in a really fun, interesting way, and through the time-jump premise McQuiston's characters explore loyalty, love, connection, and heartbreak in poignant, funny, irresistible ways. The book revels in wonderful LGBTQ love and tons of sexiness; fantastic New York-centric details; and enough musical references that multiple Spotify playlists exist that are inspired by the songs in the book. For my full review of this book, check out One Last Stop. 02 The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell In Lisa Maxwell's The Last Magician, a smart master thief bends time and finds her loyalties divided in turn-of-the-century New York. I appreciated the character of Esta as a smart master thief who can bend time, and I loved the 1901 New York setting, Dolph Saunders as a kindly magical mobster, Viola as a lesbian tough girl (with a heart of gold!) who's a genius with knives, and Harte Darrigan as a stage (and actual) magician whose loyalties are difficult to pin down. Add in the Brink as a method of controlling those with magic, the Book and its unclear powers, and the discriminatory, powerful, and dangerous Order and there's a steady, sinister underlying feel to the story. I don't think it benefited me to listen to The Last Magician, the first in Maxwell's series, as an audiobook, what with the jumps through time; varied points of view; layered disloyalties, misdirections, and motivations; and the extensive double-crossing. Some of the twists at the end felt implausible, but others wrapped up frustrating revelations in satisfying ways. For my full review of this book, check out The Last Magician. 03 Lost in Time by A.G. Riddle A.G. Riddle's time-travel story centers around reconciling the inability to change what has already occurred, but the necessity of doing so to save loved ones. With a twist! When we created Absalom, we weren't trying to build a time machine. We were trying to build a machine that saved our families. In A.G. Riddle's 450-page multiple-timeline story Lost in Time, a group of scientists have developed a device called Absalom. First intended to revolutionize shipping, its limitations and its vast possibilities lead to a new purpose: to send dangerous criminals back in time. When Sam, one of the creators of the system, is framed for the murder of another creator, he finds himself about to be sent back in his own creation as punishment. But his physicist friends are determined to try to get him back to the present again somehow. If only Sam had had time to do more than give himself a crash course in reading about the Triassic Period (weather, Pangea, dinosaur identification) or to hear his friends' ambitious plan for his return before being whisked back in time. For my full review of this book, check out Lost in Time. 04 Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister Gillian McAllister offers a smart, intriguing, twisty story that plays with time and offers second chances, revelations, betrayals, deep connections, and an unusual route to uncovering the truth. I loved it. Gillian McAllister's twisty mystery begins with a mother awaiting her teenage son's return home late one night. She peers out the window to see him walking down the street--then she sees that he is armed, and to her horror, she sees him kill another man on the street. But when she awakens the next morning bracing to face the living nightmare her family has begun living in, she's relieved to find that her son hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't been arrested, and in fact, none of last night's events have happened after all. She must be losing her mind. But she knows that last night was real. Somehow she's reliving yesterday again. Can she shift the future by changing the past? Wrong Place, Wrong Time offers a smart, mind-bending structure that is complex and interesting but not difficult to follow. McAllister develops her characters fully and uses the time jumps wonderfully--to explore relationships, truth-telling and lies, assumptions, terrible realizations, and heartwarming reassurances. For my full review of this book, check out Wrong Place, Wrong Time. 05 This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub Straub offers a story that plays with time, explores sentimental moments, offers do-overs, and sweeps the reader into a love-filled, hopeful heartbreaker of a tale. On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s job, apartment, and love life are solidly okay. The only dark spot in her life is her father’s grave illness. When she wakes up the next morning...it’s her 16th birthday again. And it isn't just that being in her teen body again shocks her, or that seeing her high school crush is jarring. It's incredible to see her healthy, vital, young dad. This Time Tomorrow indulged my own personal desire for sentimentality, while also emphasizing the value of cutting to the heart of a situation without wasting time. The story offers up lots of loving moments as well as perfectly imperfect decisions and mistakes. The story is heartbreaking and lovely in its ultimate insistence that one must let go of the past. This was one of my favorite reads of the year last year. For my full review of this book, please see This Time Tomorrow. 06 Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel In this nested story that spans centuries, Mandel explores a pandemic, moon colonization, the universal connection of music, the temptation to change the past, portals and time loops, loyalty, fear, love, and wonder. In this science fiction novel, Mandel plays with time and time travel as well as mysteries surrounding what may be a portal linking individuals through time. Mandel explores an emerging pandemic in a future with a colonized moon, considers the universal connection of music, and digs into the difficulty and danger in changing the past. But all of these players and times feel in place mainly to serve as a structure to surround our true main protagonist, Gaspary, and we see the most depth and development and change; loyalty and love and grief; wonder and danger; resignation and hope in his portion of the story. This was where I was captivated and delighted and emotionally engaged. This book appeared on the Greedy Reading List Six More Science Fiction Reads I Loved in the Past Year. Click here for my review of Mandel's Station Eleven. For my full review of this book, please check out Sea of Tranquility.

Gillian McAllister offers a smart, intriguing, twisty story that plays with time and offers second chances, revelations, betrayals, deep connections, and an unusual route to uncovering the truth. I loved it. Gillian McAllister's twisty mystery Wrong Place Wrong Time plays with time, and I love books that play with time. The story begins with a mother awaiting her teenage son's return home late one night. She peers out the window to see him walking down the street--then she sees that he is armed, and to her horror, she sees him kill another man on the street. But when she awakens the next morning bracing to face the living nightmare her family has begun living in, she's relieved to find that her son hasn't killed anyone, he hasn't been arrested, and in fact, none of last night's events have happened after all. She must be losing her mind. But she knows that last night was real. But somehow she's reliving yesterday again. She really and truly is. She can't explain what's happened, but she quickly realizes that now she may be able to stop the murder before it occurs. Can she shift the future by changing the past? She wakes again the next day to find that it is now the day before yesterday. Time is moving backward, and if she can't figure out how it's happening, she must at least figure out why. Wrong Place, Wrong Time offers a smart, mind-bending structure that is complex and interesting but not difficult to follow. McAllister develops her characters fully and uses the time jumps wonderfully--to explore relationships, truth-telling and lies, assumptions, terrible realizations, and heartwarming reassurances. Main characters have plausible reactions of disbelief, wonder, irritation, and fatigue to the unfathomable goings-on, which I loved. McAllister's twists never feel like red herrings, nor do they make me feel irritated by manipulation. I loved watching every building block slot into place as we wound our way back through time toward the truth. The story was fascinating and touching and chilling and sweet. I absolutely loved it. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you like books like this, you may want to check out these other Bossy books I've read that play with time. My Greedy Reading Lists Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore and Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories highlight some of my very favorite books that twist time!

ICYMI: In Matt Haig's How to Stop Time, main protagonist Tom Hazard lives for centuries but is not allowed to fall in love. When he rejects the rules, he must reckon with mortality, heartbreak, and the meaning and purpose of his extended existence. “That is the whole thing with the future. You don’t know. At some point you have to accept that you don’t know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.” In How to Stop Time, Matt Haig explores the beauty and the horror of time as it spools on essentially without end while his characters live through many centuries. Tom Hazard is a high school English teacher. He's also a seemingly 41-year-old man, but he's actually been alive for centuries. The Albatross Society has one rule for its members, all of whom live on and on: never fall in love. So when Tom begins to fall for the French teacher at school, it may renew his faith in the world and in humanity--but it can also only mean trouble. Haig dives into Hazard's wonder at new experiences and his and other characters' perspectives on the world and history, but also the heartbreak of their loneliness and the weight of the constant loss of their beloved “mayflies” (other people, who live such relatively short existences compared to Tom and his fellow Albatross Society members). “It made me lonely. And when I say lonely, I mean the kind of loneliness that howls through you like a desert wind. It wasn't just the loss of people I had known but also the loss of myself. The loss of who I had been when I had been with them.” While I enjoyed main protagonist Tom Hazard’s point of view, which evolves by the close of the story, the shift seemed to come about a little abruptly, so it felt somewhat unsatisfying. The ending felt a little too quickly wrapped up, and I didn’t feel particularly emotionally invested in the book's Big Events. But there were many lovely, lovely moments in How to Stop Time, and I really like Haig's writing style. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Haig is also the author of The Midnight Library and his memoir-ish book that I'm reading now, Reasons to Stay Alive, as well as many others. If you like books that play with time, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories and Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes.

I loved the idea of a relationship story told in reverse, but Out of Love touched on weighty topics that seemed to warrant deeper exploration than was possible within the structure. He stopped loving me a long time ago but wasn't brave enough to tell me. Out of Love is a love story told in reverse. The beginning of Hazel Hayes's Out of Love lays bare the painful end of a couple's relationship, and each subsequent chapter shifts backward in time to an earlier point in the couple’s time together. Hayes unravels the couple's path from final heartbreak, through a few ups and downs in the middle of their relationship, and finally to the start of their thrilling and beautiful beginning--and their first sparks of love. I love this premise, and I was hooked by Hayes's idea. But I'm not sure this story is particularly suited to the structure. Out of Love is not light fiction. Hayes explores meaningful and weighty issues: mental illness, emotional and sexual abuse, controlling manipulation, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, miscarriage, constrained desires and sexual identity, and more. In skipping from scene to scene without significant page time linking the various phases of the relationship, I felt like I was tracing disjointed moments without an exploration of the external or internal reasons for important changes and shifts. Certain nuggets of information were revealed along the way, allowing for some illumination about (sequentially) earlier motivations for actions taken in the later time periods (which I had read on earlier pages). Because of this setup for the structure of the book, I had trouble connecting to the characters and their journeys. Meanwhile, the carelessly cruel, selfish, emotionally distant behavior that occurs at the end of the couple's years together (but was presented on the first pages) lurked like a dark cloud over the entirety of the book. I was sad that I didn't get to enjoy any swooning first-love moments without the crushingly depressing implosion looming over it all. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you enjoy reading books that play with time, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories and the Greedy Reading List Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes.

I loved the premise of a teen who wakes up as a thirty-year-old, engaged to her high school nemesis. Some of the small moments didn't feel real to me, and the story felt like it was young adult--which I love but wasn't expecting here. A fun read. Charlotte Wu is a super organized overachiever, and planning the perfect prom is the final item on her high school to-do list. But decorating disasters threaten to undo her plan when she falls off a ladder and crashes into her nemesis, J. T. Renner. When Charlotte wakes up, she finds that more has gone awry than the streamers in the gym. Unless she's hallucinating or dreaming, she's thirty years old. Living in a grown-up's house, holding down a job, having an adult life. And the bearded fiance sleeping next to her...is J. T. Renner. Forget the prom-planning disaster--Charlotte and J. T. seem to have been thrown forward in time and into the thick of young adulthood. But why? How and why would she end up with her nemesis? J. T. and Charlotte must work together to figure out: Are they meant to change the future, make sure nothing changes, learn a lesson, or impart knowledge of some kind? Can they find their way back to their seventeen-year-old selves? Have they missed thirteen years of their lives--and the chance to figure out how the heck they ended up together? This premise is a slam-dunk for me. I looove a book that plays with time. Some of the small moments didn't work for me here, and the book felt like a young adult read to me (but wasn't sold as such), with the teen-focused angst and perspectives. I may have seen the mistaken-premise setup coming, and the friend betrayal, and the rough lines of the resolution to come, but I loved the bookending of the time capsule and letters to their future selves, the second-chance element, and the love. Woke Up Like This is a fun read. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? A teen-focused book I loved that played with time is Rachel Lynn Solomon's See You Yesterday. If you're intrigued by time-travel stories, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore and Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories, Six More Time-Travel Stories to Dive Into, and Six More Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore.

Rachel Lynn Solomon crafts another sweet, quirky, funny, romantic young adult story that plays with time and is centered around irresistibly imperfect characters. In See You Yesterday, Rachel Lynn Solomon explores the first day of college for Barrett Bloom, who desperately needs a fresh start. Barrett's tenacity and passion for the truth led to a journalistic coup in high school, one that exposed cheating throughout her school's crown jewel of sports, the revered, state-champion tennis team--and ensured that she was reviled by many of her peers and some in her school's administration. She was harassed and publicly shamed as a result, so her time at her state university is bound to be an improvement. But on day one, Barrett's ruthlessly straightforward manner, defensive way of keeping others at a distance, and habit of speaking harsh truths before she stops to think seem destined to lead her to misstep and thwart her own chances of success and happiness. After being involved in multiple disasters in only her first day of classes, she fears college may become a ruination on par with the end of her high school career. But she wakes up the next day...and finds that she's reliving her first day of college. She has the incredible chance to make the same decisions or to consider her choices and do things differently. The following morning, she gets yet another chance at reliving her first day. And there's an interesting boy she keeps running into, regardless of which paths and options she alters. He keeps challenging her and seems to know her somehow. Barrett can't decide if this time loop is a dream come true--or a living nightmare. Solomon is excellent at building wonderfully imperfect characters and irresistible premises that play with time, as in her Groundhog Day -type setup for this romantic young adult story. I loved Barrett and Miles's problem-solving and their discoveries about their own natures and capabilities, as well as the unorthodox team they make. Solomon's matter-of-fact mentions of various body types, relationships, and emotional challenges (including anxiety, addiction, and self-esteem issues) allows for an overall warm and fuzzy inclusivity here--and throughout her books. I love Rachel Lynn Solomon's stories, and I loved this story of Barrett and Miles and youthful adventure and finding themselves and discovering how to be vulnerable and ALL of it. Hook, line, and sinker. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Solomon is also the author of The Ex Talk, Weather Girl, and the wonderful young adult Today Tonight Tomorrow. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book (published last week) courtesy of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and NetGalley.

The Second-Chance Books I've been reminded lately how much I love a good second-chance book in which the main character gets the opportunity to go back and try again, redo their life, shift their circumstances, or change the situation around them. It's an irresistible do-over premise for me: a flawed human gets another shot at existing in this unpredictable, problematic, glorious world--and appreciating it more fully while changing their original outcomes. Three more I'd like to read along these lines include: Maybe In Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid; Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver Replay by Ken Grimwood Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought! Which other books should I add to my second-chance book list? Here are some of my favorite books on this theme. Two of these books also made it onto my Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes Greedy Reading List--along with four other great stories. 01 All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai There are flying cars in the alternate reality of this book. I think you should know that going in, because it’s not the only fantastic thing, but it is one of the fantastic things in Elan Mastai's All Our Wrong Todays. Our main protagonist Tom makes a decision that strands him in our version of the world, which feels like a dystopia to him. He encounters alternate versions of his loved ones and universe, which are jarring, but they grow on him. He strikes out to explore time and place in an effort to figure out which reality to preserve. Mastai provides a fascinating story with time travel, alternate realities, love, loss, humor, bravery, and moments that made me laugh out loud. I didn't always follow the logic as laid out in the book--including the supposed development of time travel itself and how time travelers affect realities--but I loved suspending my disbelief to be part of it. I loved All Our Wrong Todays! 02 The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North “What is the point of me? Either to change a world--many, many worlds, each touched by the choices I make in my life, for every deed a consequence, and in every love and every sorrow truth--or nothing at all.” Harry August has been born (in a train station in 1919) many times. From his second birth on, he is born each time carrying the knowledge from his previous lives, yet nothing seems to change the fact that he will die and begin again. Until his eleventh life, when a young girl arrives at his deathbed. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August," she says. "I need to send a message." Claire North has crafted a fascinating, twisty, thoughtful time-travel story. The first-person perspective drew me deeply into Harry's life. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is often funny, but North layers darkness into her book, as well as fascinating layers of betrayal. This story really hooked me. Side note: Claire North is a pen name for Catherine Webb, a young-adult author who wrote her first book, Mirror Dreams, when she was 14. 03 The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Nora Seed feels like she can't go on. Life is too much, there's no hope for anything better, and her future contains nothing more for her. Her despair leads her to try to end her life. But she finds herself transported to an in-between state that is not life and not death, in the form of a library that exists outside of time and holds shelves full of the "books" of all of her possible lives, from that frozen moment (midnight) forward. Each possibility of a present and future is built upon different combinations of decisions Nora could have made in her life in the past. Some lives are notable, others comfortable, and still others are full of pain. Nora dips in and out of different lives, trying on careers, love lives, travel adventures, fame and fortune, and a settled family life. But not having experienced and remembered each moment that led to her various life options--which she joins in medias res--keeps Nora at a distance from them. I didn't feel emotionally invested in Nora's story although I appreciated the implications of her experiences and was very interested in what would happen. The ending isn't unexpected, but it does feel hard-fought and satisfying. 04 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson Ursula didn't survive her own birth. But during her next go-round, she survived being born--only to die young in an accident. When she lived her next life, she met her demise another way. She often feels buoyed or hindered by a feeling of déjà vu, and occasionally she feels compelled to take another path, rush to check on a loved one, or take some other seemingly odd action, and she can't quite explain why. In Life After Life, Atkinson focuses her literary fiction lens on the character of Ursula, her relationships with members of her family, and details of life during World Wars I and II. This would be a captivating book even without the redoing-life element. But Atkinson's thrusting of Ursula back into her same existence as she shifts her circumstances slightly (with enormous repercussions); opens up her life to be bigger and more fulfilling (and, often longer); and develops inner strength, conviction, and self-assuredness--that's the real magic. I read (listened to) the immersive story about do-overs from Kate Atkinson, Life After Life, at the recommendation of my wise friend Laura. Click here for my full review of Life After Life. 05 In Five Years by Rebecca Serle Dannie is on the path to achieving her five-year goals in spectacularly efficient fashion. She goes to sleep one evening satisfied--but she wakes up in another life: with a strange apartment, a different boyfriend, and an alternate set of choices behind and before her. And perhaps most confusingly of all, in this second life she's lost some of her original, lifelong, rigid plans for her future, yet she's happy. Very very happy. She returns to her original reality, but Dannie can’t shake the possibilities and uncertainty created by what felt like an actual, temporary shift in her existence. What happened? But more importantly: What does that vastly different set of circumstances and her satisfaction within it mean about how she can and should live her life? Serle's In Five Years totally hit the spot for me, and it also wasn’t exactly what I expected. The setup seems like it’s a romance, but it’s really a story about loyalty and devoted friendship without easy or saw-it-coming resolutions, and not everything is as it seems. I loved it. 06 The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver Lydia had planned to spend the rest of her life with her childhood sweetheart and fiancé, Freddie, in their hometown of Shropshire, England. Now she's coming to terms with the recent and tragic loss of the person she loved and the future she had envisioned. But a medication aimed to help her sleep during this difficult time induces an incredible side effect: when she sleeps after taking it, she exists in a dreamworld where Freddie is still alive. She can see him, smell him, and touch him. He is unaware that this is a second reality for Lydia and unaware of anything odd about this life, and Lydia must fight to not seem as though she is grieving him--fortunately, this is made easier by how real he seems in this other timeline. Life in this alternate sleep reality continues branching off from the daytime life in which Freddie is gone; her sleeping life involves its own joys, tragedies, and increasingly complicated set of circumstances that show the realistically plausible challenges and crossroads the couple might have faced because of their real-life career tracks, senses of responsibility, and diverging paths toward happiness. Josie Silver's lovely book is heartwarming and doesn't feel overly sentimental or emotionally manipulative. The characters' feelings of anger, crushing grief, and hope feel real in both realities she's created. There's joy, and there's sadness, and there are messy routes toward forgiveness and cautious optimism. For my full review, please see The Two Lives of Lydia Bird.

This captivating story involves time travel, but it's primarily about deep human connections, complete with fantastic, funny banter; awkward adjustments to the time period; and love and deep heartbreak. The ending is wonderful. In a world of the near future, a young (unnamed) woman is one of several civil servants offered a mysterious job: she'll be a handler for expats--and paid very handsomely for her work. But the expats the government is gathering aren't necessarily from another country. They're from other times in history. The main protagonist's focus in her work is Commander Graham Gore (a character based upon a real figure from history), who has been whisked from a desperately failed expedition in 1847 to the book's future setting. In order to be a "bridge" for Gore between his past and the present, she'll have to explain why she's showing so much skin, why it's not healthy to smoke all day, and what a washing machine is. But the bridge and her client are building bonds deeper than either could have imagined; the love story between the bridge and Gore is strange, heartwarming, steamy, fraught, and just lovely. I was obsessed with the various expats' awkward, funny, sometimes poignant adjustments to their new time, social expectations, technology, slang, and more. Their common disjointedness brings them together, and the mashup of personalities and histories was fantastic. This starts out witty and fun, grows dark and ominous, with suspect motives, corruption, deadly danger, and foreshadowing of heartbreak and endings. There are twists I didn't see coming, which I was willing to suspend my disbelief regarding; and my mind was bent around trying to follow some of the later strings of time and timelines. The ending is gorgeous and I just loved it. I received a prepublication edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Avid Reader Press, Simon and Schuster. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? To read about other books I've reviewed that play with time, please check out this link.

Straub offers a wonderful story that plays with time, explores sentimental moments, offers do-overs, and sweeps the reader into a love-filled, hopeful heartbreaker of a tale. "...no one ever talked to me about it, that's for sure--what it feels like to love someone so much, and then have them change into someone else. You love that new person, but it's different, and it all happens so fast, even the parts that feel like they just last for fucking ever while they're happening." On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s job, apartment, and love life are solidly okay. The only dark spot in her life is her father’s grave illness. When she wakes up the next morning...it’s her 16th birthday again. And it isn't just that being in her teen body again shocks her, or that seeing her high school crush is jarring. It's incredible to see her healthy, vital, young dad. Knowing what she does about the future, would Alice change the past? I am a huuuuuuge fan of books that play with time, and Straub offers up all the best parts of a time-travel book in This Time Tomorrow. Alice gets to live as her young self again, with the benefit of adult wisdom but temporarily carefree. She gets do-over chances and plays with how various decisions shift her potential future. She treasures and basks in the glorious, beautiful, temporary moments that shaped her. She soaks in time with her healthy, vital father. This Time Tomorrow indulged my own personal desire for sentimentality, while also emphasizing the value of cutting to the heart of a situation without wasting time. The story offers up lots of loving moments as well as perfectly imperfect decisions and mistakes. The story is heartbreaking and lovely in its ultimate insistence that one must let go of the past. Do you have any Bossy thoughts abotu this book? Emma Straub is also the author of The Vacationers, All Adults Here, Modern Lovers, and other books. If you like books that play with time, you might also enjoy the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories.

Rebecca Serle's love letter to Italy plays with time to allow a grieving young woman to know her mother at her same age, inspiring heartwarming realizations. In Rebecca Serle's One Italian Summer, Katy is reeling after the death of her beloved mother, who was her best friend, her guide to life, her tastemaker, her everything. Katy is deeply grieving while questioning her own life, including her marriage to a kind man. She is determined to take the trip to Italy she and her mother had optimistically planned during her mom's illness, and she's set on revisiting the places her mom has raved about since Katy was a child. Katy is at a loss emotionally, and she's tempted to turn to a handsome young guest at her Italian hotel to soothe her feelings and satisfy her need for distraction. She's falling in love with the piece of Italy that helped shape her beloved mother into who she was. But Katy begins to discover that her perfect mother wasn't without faults--and that she left out important pieces of her own Italian adventures. In fact, she kept secrets that now make Katy question aspects of her own life she had always taken for granted. Katy also begins to recognize what the reader might notice early on: that her intense lifetime reliance on her mother in all areas of her life has left her without the benefit of independence, decision-making, and the strength that autonomy (and mistakes) build in a person. When Katy wakes up one day faced with her actual own mother standing in her hotel lobby in the prime of her youth, she wonders if she's hallucinating. But it all seems so real. As days pass, Katy realizes she seems to have been been gifted with an opportunity to know her mother in a way that seemed impossible. And if she can cope with her own sadness and dive into the unfathomable experience, she just might learn valuable lessons about herself and her own character too. One Italian Summer was a slim book and a sweet love letter to Italy. I enjoyed how Serle played with time to allow a young woman to know her mother at her same age. It's an irresistible setup and a satisfying, light read. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Rebecca Serle is also the author of In Five Years, The Dinner List, and When You Were Mine. If you like books that play with time, you might also enjoy the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore and Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories.

Much of the book involves thwarted attempts to unravel the past by a main protagonist who has been emotionally destroyed by trauma and loss. Joseph Bridgeman took his little sister to the fair, and he only looked away for a second. But in that instant, his little sister Amy disappeared. Two decades later, Joe remains haunted by her absence. He obsesses over what he might have done differently, how he might have paid more attention, how he might have saved her. Joe has always had certain "viewings": he can sometimes touch an object and see clear scenes from the past, understanding how and when that object was important to someone. He glimpses moments from the past when he holds Amy's hair ribbon, which was lost that day. But the viewing offers no concrete information that he can use. He is a shell of a man, ruined by the loss of his sister. His father and mother were similarly brutally damaged by Amy's disappearance. In an attempt to cure his insomnia, Joe undergoes hypnotherapy...and finds out that he has bigger powers than he ever imagined: he can travel back through time. He repeatedly attempts to time travel to the night Amy disappeared, but the amount of time he can spend in the past is getting shorter and shorter, and if he can't reach the correct day soon, the possibility of figuring out what happened to Amy will slip through his fingers forever. I listened to And Then She Vanished as an audiobook. The book is set in Great Britain, and the supporting characters have British accents. I couldn't figure out any reason why Joe would not have a British accent, but he did not, although he uses words like "tetchy" and "proper" and is meant to be British. I found this American-accented Joe extremely distracting. A grown man's voicing of the little-girl voice for Amy felt off to me, and the tone of the narration came across to me as generally irritated, as though Joe were fed up with it all. Joe is presented as a guy's guy here. He is understandably emotionally stunted and is somewhat childlike in certain ways because of his life of trauma and loss. But at one point in the book, when he's preparing to have a woman at his house, he looks around at how messy it is and says something to the effect of "Did all of these clothes that are lying around just walk themselves into every room?" I was impatient with this "helpless, clueless man" scenario. NO, JOE. THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED. You made a mess. You made all of this mess. Take responsibility for yourself, mister! Because of our extremely limited our page time with Amy, who is the heart of the mission here--and the loss of Amy caused the unraveling heartbreak and destruction for her family--she comes across as one-dimensional. The structure of the story and its focus on Joe and his attempt to master time travel didn't allow me to feel a connection to her. At around 85 percent of the way through the book, we finally see a version of the encounter we've been waiting for. We spend much of the page time that leads up to that moment--that is, by far the bulk of the book--with other people telling Joe theories about how to jump through time, teaching Joe how to improve his mindfulness, and with Joe making frustratingly brief, failed attempts. The resolution involves a twist I had anticipated and leaves a main character in a state of upheaval as a result of the time travel (as part of a classic time-travel conundrum involving alternate paths and lives). The latter situation felt immensely unsatisfying to me. Yet I loved the premise of this story, and I do love a time-travel book and a mystery. This is the first in a series. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you like books that play with time, you may like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories or some of the other time-travel stories I've reviewed.

The Time-Travel Books What are your favorite time-travel books? I had trouble narrowing down this list, and I love a time-travel book in any genre. I'd love to hear about others you love! If you're intrigued by time-travel stories, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories. 01 Recursion by Blake Crouch In Blake Crouch's Recursion, Barry Sutton is a NYC cop looking into a suicide. Helena Smith is a neuroscientist creating technology to preserve memories and allow people to relive them. People like the victim Sutton is investigating are told that their vivid recollections of their life’s memories are not real, and that they’re actually mentally ill, suffering from False Memory Syndrome. When they encounter loved ones from their memories who are now living alternate lives, in many cases they are unable to cope with their conflicting realities. While Sutton begins digging into what’s real and what’s a lie, Smith works feverishly to preserve memories and reality. Together, they have to identify and confront dark forces that might be manipulating—and destroying—the minds and the framework of society as we know it. I cared so much about Sutton and Smith and their mission. Blake Crouch writes character-driven science fiction that I love (Dark Matter is another of his that I found fascinating.) This was sooooo good, unexpected, sweeping, and compelling. 02 Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen Kin Stewart was a time-traveling secret agent in 2142. He was stranded in the 1990s when a mission went wrong. Now he lives life as a regular guy; he works in IT, he’s happily married, and he has a beloved daughter. They have no idea about his past, which is just how he wants it. When he begins to have memory loss and other odd symptoms, he realizes it’s linked to his past time travel. Then a rescue mission arrives decades too late, to bring him to 2142 and back to another life with another family. Stewart would have to break all the rules of time travel to attempt the impossible: preserve the existence of his daughter in his current reality without destroying everything else. In Here and Now and Then Mike Chen masterfully explores: Is the past set in stone or is it malleable? Which half of Kin’s dual life is most true or immediate or valued? How much physical turmoil can one body take before giving in? What does a hero do when honesty requires putting his life at risk, yet is also essential to save it? I loooved this. Chen writes a deeply felt warring of emotions and conflicting responsibility and duty. I adore a character-driven science-fiction tale. Also, time travel! This totally hit the spot. 03 In Five Years by Rebecca Serle Dannie is on the path to achieving her five-year goals in spectacularly efficient fashion. She goes to sleep satisfied, but wakes up in another life: a strange apartment, a different boyfriend, and an alternate set of choices behind and before her. And perhaps most confusingly of all, in this second life she's lost some of her original, lifelong, rigid plans for her future, yet she's happy. Very very happy. She returns to her original reality, but Dannie can’t shake the possibilities and uncertainty created by what felt like an actual, temporary shift in her existence. What happened? But more importantly: What does that vastly different set of circumstances and her satisfaction within it mean about how she can and should live her life? Serle's In Five Years totally hit the spot for me, and it also wasn’t exactly what I expected. The setup seems like the story is a romance, but it’s actually a story about loyalty and devoted friendship without easy or saw-it-coming resolutions, and not everything is as it seems. I loved it. 04 The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow January has lived with Mr. Locke as his ward since her beloved, offbeat father disappeared during a trip to acquire artifacts for the wealthy man’s collections. Her father has since been presumed dead, and Locke keeps her safe and cared for, if without affection. But she is growing older and is looking for answers about her father’s disappearance. When she finds a mysterious book her father had acquired, it shows January unlikely possibilities about her existence and the world at large that it’s difficult to process. When she uncovers unwelcome truths about Locke and her circumstances, she has no choice but to forge into the frightening unknown. Alix E. Harrow has crafted a lovely adventure through different wonderfully imagined worlds (including the early 1900s home base). The Ten Thousand Doors of January also explores the wondrous bravery but sometimes dark and destructive forces surrounding the explorers and collectors venturing through worlds and the wanderers desperately searching for home. I received a copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 05 The Bone Clocks by Davi Mitchell Teenager Holly Sykes is suddenly drawn into the world of “the radio people,” people whose voices she heard as a child. She disappears from her family and leaves behind a tragic mystery, while in her forays through new worlds she attracts dangerous powers to her. David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks is a set of six intriguing tracks through time that are full of surprises and interconnected through Holly and her various threads of reality. There are links to other Mitchell books and characters if you're paying attention, but the book can stand alone. I can say with certainty that I've never read a book quite like this before. A full genre shift around page 400 would normally make me want to throw a book through the window. But here it works somehow. This was strange and compelling. 06 All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai There are flying cars in the alternate reality of this book. Flying cars. I think you should know that going in, because it’s not the only awesome thing, but it is one of the awesome things in Elan Mastai's All Our Wrong Todays. Our main protagonist Tom makes a decision that strands him in our version of the world, which feels like a dystopia to him. He encounters alternate versions of his loved ones and universe, which are jarring but grow on him. He strikes out to explore time and place in an effort to figure out which reality to preserve. Mastai provides a fascinating story with time travel, alternate realities, love, loss, humor, bravery, and moments that made me laugh out loud. I didn't always follow the logic as laid out in the book--the supposed development of time travel itself and how time travelers affect realities--but I loved suspending my disbelief to be part of it. I loved this!

McQuiston's love letter to New York offers charming song references, LGBTQ love, steamy scenes, character growth--and an irresistible playing-with-time element. In One Last Stop, twenty-three-year-old August keeps to herself--she's kind of cynical, she doesn't have a lot of friends, and she's holding true to form after her recent move to New York. Her mother dedicated her life to searching for her own brother, who disappeared decades ago, and enlisted daughter August in her obsessive research and in her driven questioning of even the most tangentially connected potential contacts in order to try to find out what happened. August needs to put some distance between her mother and herself, and if her mom has taught her anything, it's the pain of experiencing loss after loving and being vulnerable. To say that August isn't particularly inclined to let anyone into her own emotional life is a serious understatement. But August's adorably quirky roommates and a mystery woman she keeps running into on the Q train might just bring her out of her shell and make her want to risk opening up her heart. One Last Stop plays with time in a really fun, interesting way, and through the time-jump premise McQuiston's characters explore loyalty, love, connection, and heartbreak in poignant, funny, irresistible ways. The book revels in wonderful LGBTQ love and tons of sexiness; fantastic New York-centric details; and enough musical references that multiple Spotify playlists exist that are inspired by the songs in the book. I listened to One Last Stop as an audiobook and just adored McQuiston's story. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? McQuiston is also the author of Red, White, and Royal Blue. I recently listed some of my favorite romantic, light stories in the Greedy Reading List Six Great Light Fiction Stories Perfect for Summer Reading. I love to read stories that involve playing with time. If you like those too, you might like to check the site for other books in this vein, or check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories or Six Riveting Time-Travel Stories to Explore.

Johnson offers a wonderfully imperfect heroine and her fascinating journeys through the multiverse, her various lives, and her alternate selves in this science fiction debut. Cara is one of a dwindling number of traversers. She can travel through the multiverse, but only to worlds where another version of herself no longer exists. Her other selves seem uncannily apt to die, so Cara is able to visit 372 other Earths where her counterparts are no longer living. She comes from poverty and an unfavored area, and she lives in uncertain status, without citizenship or security aside from her employment for the mysterious, greedy Eldridge Institute. She collects off-world data, the purpose of which has never been of interest to her--she's more focused on tracking the shadows of her other existences, piecing together the lives of her counterparts, and keeping a journal of all that was and might have been. If I figured anything out in these last six years, it is this: human beings are unknowable. But when one of Cara's eight remaining selves mysteriously dies while she is world walking, shocking secrets are revealed that connect various worlds and shake Cara to her core. She must cobble together the various bits of knowledge and savviness she's gained through tracing the steps of her many other selves if she's going to stand any chance of outsmarting the canny and intelligent Adam Bosch--a man who will otherwise almost certainly be the source of her undoing. I could become the thing I'd always feared, and then I might never be afraid of anything again. This was a fascinating story that offered satisfying character depth and various permutations of Cara herself, her family members, loves, nightmarish enemies, and best friends. Johnson's explorations of the complicated intersections of class, wealth and poverty, control of valuable resources, and disparate levels of freedom throughout the multiverse are haunting. Cara lives through tantalizing explorations of her alternate lives--and the shape of each is dramatically affected by her own various small and large decisions, others' choices, and chance. I was intrigued by the layers Johnson built into the story. In some worlds, Cara recognizes common characteristics in those she loves or fears; she sometimes barely recognizes the same people in other worlds; and she always mentally logs the various factors that allowed beauty or cruelty or desperation or joy to take root. There's a postapocalyptic feel to the story, with turf wars, corruption, mercenary "runners" who shake down travelers, and gritty survivors. When asked what this discovery could teach us about what mattered, about death, and human nature, and how to make the world a gentler place, both parties were silent. But we were right, the scientists said. And so were we, the spiritual said. Cara isn't superhuman; she's imperfect, sometimes selfish, tough, and occasionally she's wonderfully vulnerable. I loved her as an unlikely heroine, and I loved that it wasn't too easy for her to attempt to address complex issues within the multiverse. The middle of the story dragged a little bit for me, but generally I was hooked and ready for whatever Johnson was serving up. Side note: I'd like for this story to also become a movie, thank you very much. I received an advance digital copy of this book courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This is Micaiah Johnson's first book. Its tone reminded me a little bit of The Goddess in the Machine. If you like books with a postapocalyptic feel, check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels.

In this nested story that spans centuries, Mandel explores a pandemic, moon colonization, the universal connection of music, the temptation to change the past, portals and time loops, loyalty, fear, love, and wonder. I listened to Emily St. John Mandel's newest book, Sea of Tranquility. In this science fiction novel, Mandel plays with time and time travel as well as mysteries surrounding what may be a portal linking individuals through time. Mandel explores an emerging pandemic in a future with a colonized moon, considers the universal connection of music, and digs into the difficulty and danger in changing the past. In 1912, Edwin St. Andrew, a second son, is exiled by his family from England to Canada for voicing unpopular opinions at the dinner table (don’t get too invested in him; he’s here to allow St. John to set the 1912 piece of the puzzle). In 2020, we meet Mirella and Vincent (characters from The Glass Hotel). They are also not richly developed, but they're important to the structure and the odd interconnectedness at the heart of the mysterious events here. Much later, during a period of extensive moon colonization (and the beginnings of further flung settlements), author Olive Llewellyn is traveling on a book tour to promote her book Marienbad, about a pandemic. (The plot of this book within a book sounds somewhat similar to that of Mandel’s Station Eleven, a book I loved). But all of these players and times feel mainly to be in place to serve as a structure for our true main protagonist, Gaspary, and we see the most depth and development and change; loyalty and love and grief; wonder and danger; resignation and hope in his portion of the story. This was where I was captivated and delighted and emotionally engaged. Scorned Edwin has an odd experience in the forest with inexplicable futuristic visions and sounds; two centuries later (our current day) Olive writes about an almost identical personal experience; and detective Gaspary from the future's Night City investigates their mysterious intersections through time--and becomes inextricably linked to a timeline connecting all of them. The time travel and multiple story lines and odd, interesting, untethered moments that kept me from settling in time reminded me a little bit of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, but at a slim 255 pages (Bone Clocks is 624 pages), Sea of Tranquility is a story shaped by its structure, without as much room or page time to meander as Mitchell's story. Sea of Tranquility is strange and ethereal, with a surprise toward the end that I delighted in. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Do you like books that play with time? You might like the books I list on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories or Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes or these Bossy reviews of books that play with time. Click here for my review of Mandel's Station Eleven.