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All Our Wrong Todays: A Novel
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All Our Wrong Todays: A Novel
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All Our Wrong Todays: A Novel
Audiobook10 hours

All Our Wrong Todays: A Novel

Written by Elan Mastai

Narrated by Elan Mastai

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Elan Mastai's acclaimed debut novel is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms.

It's 2016, and in Tom Barren's world, technology has solved all of humanity's problems-there's no war, no poverty, no under-ripe avocadoes. Unfortunately, Tom isn't happy. He's lost the girl of his dreams. And what do you do when you're heartbroken and have a time machine? Something stupid.

Finding himself stranded in a terrible alternate reality-which we immediately recognize as our 2016--Tom is desperate to fix his mistake and go home. Right up until the moment he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and the woman who may just be the love of his life.

Now Tom faces an impossible choice. Go back to his perfect but loveless life. Or stay in our messy reality with a soulmate by his side. His search for the answer takes him across continents and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future--our future--is supposed to be.

Filled with humor and heart and packed with insight, intelligence, and mind-bending invention, All Our Wrong Todays is a powerful and moving story of life, loss, and love.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 7, 2017
ISBN9781524734695
Unavailable
All Our Wrong Todays: A Novel

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Reviews for All Our Wrong Todays

Rating: 3.718662867130919 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I think I'm still processing this one. Part of me really liked it, part of me really didn't. On the whole I think there were some really great parts and some parts that seem unnecessary in hindsight. I know that's a terrible review. I loved the concept of this book, I liked the way it kept me interested and curious. The main character was quite hard to like at first, but have hope, he pulls through and you actually do root for him. The contrast between now and their now was very interesting to me and I sort of wish there was a bit more of that, but it's not necessary to the story so I get not drawing that out. I do recommend this book, and I will look for more by this author, I like his voice and want more of what he has to say.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Time travel story told as a biography. Some interesting new aspects to the genre, but with many small technical details that are just plain wrong that made me remove half a star to the rating.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A novel about 2016 as a dystopia? You don't say. All sarcasm aside, this novel is a bit more complicated, as one might expected from a science fiction book involving time travel. The narrator Tom is from the 2016 we once thought we'd have (limitless clean energy, all basic needs met, etc) who finds himself transported to the 2016 we consider the real world. As Tom learns to navigate our world, he offers a fresh perspective of the technologies we live with and without and how our world might be improved - but not too much, since (as it turns out) things actually could have been much worse.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Starts off clunky and tough to read, but by the end resolves itself into an interesting time-travel romp.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I like books that review themselves: "So, I'm sorry this isn't a time travel romp. I was expecting causal loops and reality fluctuations and branching dimensions and scientifically questionable solutions to ornate space-time paradoxes. I wasn't expecting actual human pain."

    A fun, goofy narrator gets the book started, romance helps drive it along, and dramatic turns keep it thrilling. What a wonderful take on the time travel genre.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Close...but not quite a favorite. It's a very complex storyline and at some point, you just have to release trying to figure out the logic of the plot and ride it. The first 2/3 is really less about time travel and more about parallel timelines. As in, we have multiple selves that exist on different planes of time) and involves the main character traveling across the same window of time, but experiencing different versions of himself. The last 1/3 involves both directions of time travel - traveling back to a point in time and materially changing the selves that would come later. Like I said...interesting, but very complicated to follow.There's aspects of sci-fi and romance, but it's not wholly either so it might find readers in either of these genres, but won't wholly satisfy either. It doesn't have the romance of The Time Traveler's Wife or Outlander, the cultural drama of 11/22/63, or the mechanics of the time machine. Thematically, t's probably closest to Crouch's Dark Matter, though not *that* close. Of the too, I preferred Dark Matter, but there's room for both, so if you liked that, try this one and vice versa.I'll be curious to follow the author's writing trajectory - there's a lot of interesting potential there.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm a sucker for time travel books, and the premise of this one is really interesting: the narrator lives in the present day, but his present day is a 1950s utopia where technology has solved all of life's problems, largely thanks to a source of limitless clean energy. The narrator goes back in time to the moment when that source of energy was invented, and accidentally alters the timeline. When he returns to the present, he finds himself in our present. At first, he hates it and wants to restore the timeline to the one he originally knew, but he realizes that his family is much better in this present, so he has to decide which present he wants.The first three quarters of the book is great. The story moves quickly, the science more or less makes sense, it's funny and engaging. Then, the last quarter of the book completely bombs. It gets confusing and convoluted, and the narrator has several moments where he suddenly understands another character and changes his whole perspective for reasons that aren't clear to the reader, and then it gets sappy. I listened to the audiobook, which is read by the author. Sometimes authors make terrible narrators, but Mastai is great.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tom, the narrator, lives in a utopian 2016 where a world-changing invention in 1965 guaranteed limitless, clean, free energy, freeing humanity from drudgery. Tom's father is inventing a time-travel machine, and when a relationship with his crush goes horribly wrong, Tom impulsively travels back in time and screws everything up. He's thrust back into a different 2016 where the energy engine was never invented--a dirty dystopian world that is actually our 2016. He has to decide whether he wants to set things right, and if so, how. For much of the novel, it's not actually clear whether Tom is just crazy, although that is resolved, and this is actually a time-travel story, which like so many, gets tangled and somewhat paradoxical at the end. Still, I enjoyed the breezy narration and Tom's evolution as a character, as well as the general reflection on our ideas about utopias.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    DID NOT FINISHEventually this book is about time travel, but I didn't get that far. I read the first 125 pages, which are about all of the women the main character has slept with, and his mother. His mother gave her whole life to a genius husband who barely registered her existence, and eventually got hit by a car careening toward her husband and died. Their son has never put any effort into anything and does not even aspire to basic attempts at competence, like showing up to work at his father's company on time. He is very self-depreciating but totally deserves the depreciation, like a person with impostor syndrome who is actually completely unqualified. And yet from the stories he tells, he has either never met a woman who doesn't want to sleep with him or he does not remember any women he meets who do not sleep with him (or both). The stories include his friend who is "cold to other women" and with whom he is "just friends" but of course they sleep together, and a random girl he meets on the street when he is twelve years old and has run away from home, who keeps him in her house for five days and they "make out for hours" and are eventually discovered almost naked together in her bed. Twelve years old.The author/book seem to be somewhat aware of the problems presented - aside from the aforementioned self-depreciation, the narrator points out his mother's unfair sacrifices, and makes a point of providing the first and last name of every woman he mentions sleeping with so that they are not just conquests. But that only makes them conquests with names. While acknowledging that the problems in this story exist is important, the author still wrote a story with all these problems in it. Before I even got to the time travel part, I hated the main character so much that I could not stand to be in his first-person head for a minute longer.It could be argued that this book is more about world-building than the main character. The beginning of the book takes place in the present day in an alternate timeline created when an unlimited source of energy was invented in 1975. But like the main character's life, the world doesn't hold up to much scrutiny either. The world alternates between valuing science-for-the-sake-of-science and not valuing science, and between requiring funding/profits/money and not requiring funding/profits/money, about every 20 pages. There's a reason very few people write utopias, and that's because it's hard. This is not a successful one. While I suppose it is possible that the rest of the plot involves the main character learning how to actually do a tiny amount of work, and that women are human beings with agency, I was born knowing that so I won't be sticking around to find out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    First - I have to respond to the reviewers who complained that chapters were too short. Really? Yes, many of them were short, but a) who cares about chapter length, and b)I thought it worked well with the pacing of the book.
    Next - to those who say this is a 'relationship' book, not a time travel book. Really? I read a lot of time travel stories, and I can't think of any that focus solely on time travel. Frankly, such a book would be rather boring. The time travel is integral to this story.

    On the issue of time travel... in my opinion, the key to a good time travel story, is that the author has to be clear on what the rules are, and then follow those rules. Mastai does all of that, and throws a twist - albeit a completely logical twist - into the usual rules.

    I loved the beginning, and I very much like the end. In the middle, there were parts that flowed well, and parts that dragged.. which is why this is 4 stars not 5. But definitely worth putting on your to-read list.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    In which a bumbling cosmonaut sends himself back fifty years to witness the initial operation of a fabulous machine which made possible his modern world, filled with all the marvels we were told we were going to have in the 21st century and, by interfering with the experiment, alters the course of history, creates a parallel world--our own--where all this innovation never happens. More to the point of the plot, that means that he creates alter egos for himself and his family who get involved with his soul-searching about whether he should return to the past and change history yet again.This is a difficult book. As the narrator points out, it's not a time travel romp. He spends a great deal of time chewing a technological cud about how the time machines (and, even less interestingly, the aforementioned machine which made them possible) work and the philosophy of what it might mean to meddle with history. He attacks these questions, especially the former, with a maximum of jargon, and I became quite weary of having to consult a dictionary frequently, especially since the words are mostly not in the collegiate dictionary, and I began to wonder whether they were real physics terms, or he was playing with us, Douglas Adams style, with mock-scientific mumbo-jumbo. The book's plot, once it got past considerable backstory, was interesting enough, but our self-deprecating narrator reminded us so frequently what an unlikable dunce he was that I finally just took him at his word, and since none of the other characters were at all likable, I didn't much care what happened to them either. This gets some points for originality (despite the resemblances to Adams' much superior work) but I was glad when it ended--just as the narrator predicted I would be.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fifty years after the first test of a machine that used Earth's movement through space to produce massive, free energy, there is no want, little violence, and almost no religion, and people spend their free time using devices that design entertainments fit to the individual. A time machine has been invented, and the plan is to use it's public debut to transport six chrononauts to witness that first energy experiment. But only one person actually leaves on the mission, and he fires up the time machine without telling anyone and just, well, goes. Things do not go well, to say the least. The novel is told in first person by that one chrononaut, and his voice is funny and self-deprecating, much like that of the astronaut in Andy Weir's "The Martian". This book has the same breezy, fast-paced plotting, although it's longer and more complicated. But the science is easy, and as a lay person who wouldn't know what is and isn't really possible, I found this an amusing and fast read with some suspense and a variety of likeable and not-so-likeable characters, as well as some discussion about how much guilt someone should feel for changing the future and what the hell the nature of reality is, anyway. Very enjoyable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little confusing because the protagionist makes three trips back to the past and thus has three identities. The reader sounds a lot like Ira Glass of This American Life fame.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    July 11, 1965 marks the most pivotal moment in history. It was the day that Earth was given the gift of unlimited clean energy, which led to humanity creating a peaceful and prosperous life for everyone.... And it was the day that billions of people died in a horrendous explosion, which led to changes in coastlines and climate, and perpetual war.... And it was a day unmarked in history, in which an experiment failed and few people either noticed or cared. The protagonist of this story is aware that each of these contradictory histories are true because he is responsible for each of them.

    Time travel stories are not normally a favorite of mine. Some, like Doctor Who, are fun and campy, but the concept seldom seems to work without some extreme silliness going on. All Our Wrong Todays is different. It's probably the most original take on time travel I've seen in a while, and although it's far from plausible, it's not silly. It's actually quite enjoyable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tom Barren thinks you are living in the wrong 2016. In his 2016, life is amazing. There is no more hunger, energy crisis, or war. Everyone has everything they need and no one has to go without. Resources are unlimited and life is easy. Technology has solved most of the major problems in the world. So what went wrong? Tom begins his narrative by admitting that our world was his screwup and it was all his fault. Tom urgently tries to fix the mistake that he made to get back to his world and save us all from our miserable world, however, his efforts may erase us from existing in his parallel universe.This is a fun, exciting romp across virtual realities using a time-travel machine, similar to Back to the Future. The story was a bit simplistic with stereotypical good vs. evil characters, but overall, it was entertaining. I particularly loved the narrative style with Tom talking to the reader directly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tom's father is a genius type science guy who writes a book on time travel and builds a time machine. Tom thinks he can never measure up in his father's eyes. So, to change that scenario, Tom jumps in the machine and goes back in history to correct a wrong. He finds in that era that he has an alternate life where everything and everyone is turned around. This quick read is about finding love, evil scientists, and getting to know yourself. My thanks to the author and the Penguin First to Read program for a complimentary copy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tom Barren is not from the future. He is from another 2016: A 2016 where everyone has flying cars, people take day-trips to the Moon, and teleportation is commonplace. However, that 2016 doesn't exist anymore and it's all his fault. Now we're stuck with this 2016 and he doesn't know how to fix it. Look, I love a good time travel story and this one is terrific. I love that he's not actually from the future, just a better present. I love that there's a couple of points in the story when I begin to wonder if Tom really did travel back in time or if he is experiencing a psychotic break and just imagined it. The fun is in finding out. This book is funny and irreverent and really great sci-fi and I can't wait to get everyone else to read it so we can talk about it together.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5*s, well-written, a little hard to get into, long set up.I'm not sure how to describe this book! -- but it is a time travel book beginning in the future of 2016. But although it is our Now, it is a different Now than ours. And all the changes started in a time travel accident that happened in 1965. So there's a lot of figuring out and going back and forth from 1965 to the future of 2016, and into different outcomes and futures. It's really strange, it took me almost 150 pages to settle into it and get really interested. Then I couldn't put it down! Every time travel book is so different and each has its own set of rules it seems. It was interesting to see how this author envisions time travel and what can be done with it. I liked it but my recommendation would be "if-y" meaning read it at your own risk. I can see some people loving it and lots of people hating it. I say just try it and see what you think :)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Tom Barren is, well, kind of a loser. He lives in an alternate 2016, one where the grandest imaginings of the post-WWII era are reality, thanks to a scientist in the 1960s who created a machine to harness the energy of the Earth's rotation. Jetsons-like technology is the stuff of everyday reality. But Tom's just drifting, ever in the shadow of his genius father. After his mother dies, Tom's father gives him a pity job in his lab, where his father is trying to make time travel a reality. Tom is an understudy to one of the team of chrononauts who will make the first leap into the past -- but Tom will never time travel; the chrononaut he's shadowing is way too dedicated and competent. And then, inevitably, the unthinkable occurs...I don't read a huge amount of science fiction, but every now and then a book jumps out and grabs me. That's what happened with this one: I read a review, the library ebook was available, and I read it over the course of a couple days. Tom's a great character, flawed but likable, and the world building is great. If you have any interest in this kind of story, you should read this book. I've already recommended it to two non-Internet friends. It's early days yet, but I can easily see this book holding a spot in my top five of the year.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just when you think you have given up on time travel stories this book comes along. Wow! This is science fiction at its best. It shines a light on where we are, where we are going, and the possibilities of where we can end up. While doing so it will make you think, make you laugh, and there might even have been a tear or two. So much for the life we thought we were "supposed" to have. It also has great crossover appeal for readers who don't think they like science fiction. I already know this will be on my 2017 Best of the Year List. It is that good! I can't wait to hand this to people when it comes out in February.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a book about time travel. I loved how it was narrated by Tom. As per his dad, he was a loser. Everything he touched turned out bad. He tried several jobs and none of them had ever worked out for him. His dad, of course, was a genius. Everything he touched turned into gold (or into the greated invention ever) and his dad was working on a time machine. The night before his dad's time machine is going it's first ever visit back into time, Tom sleeps with the leading chrononaut on the mission. Naturally, he gets her pregnant and screws up the whole mission. His father is P.O.'d. Yet again his son has touched something and messed it up. Tom decides to go on the mission himself. He goes back to 1965. He then returns back to 2015 and discovers, you guessed it. He messed it up. There are no longer flying cars, robots, fingertouch accesses, buttons you push and the food is delivered, etc. Nope 2015 is pretty much how we see it. There is no Jetson era anymore.Tom is on a mission to get his world back.This was an very entertaining read. It definitely held my interest. There were a few times when they would talk this science gobbly goop and my eyes would bleed, but fortunately that was rare and short. There were definitely a few laughs. On the whole, entertaining, enjoyable and definitely recommendable.Huge thanks to Penguin Group Dutton for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is not my favorite genre, but it was pretty good sci-fi. I enjoyed much of the plot but found the scientific descriptions and explanations a bit overdone. Still, it was enjoyable and entertaining. The more serious parts of the story were more my style, but the self-deprecating humor was lighthearted and fun. All in all, it was a slightly silly, but endearing story about the triumph of love and family, that made it a worthy read.Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Oh man oh man oh man! What a book. I got an early reader copy of this from NetGalley and oh boy am I lucky I ever did. I wish I had a time machine so I could back to the beginning and read it all again from the start, conveniently erasing my earlier reading from my memories so I could relive it all over again fresh.I loved the tone and voice of Tom, the predominant narrator, loved the style, the telling, the twists and turns. Goddamn it's enough to make a fellow time travel writer jealous. This is an excellent book with some fun wrinkles in the time travel genre, a lovable bumbler of a main character, and is just a great read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Solid Sci Fi about time travel well done but confusing about the cause and effect of time travel. I think this is a difficult subject to explain without exceptional examples to make the concepts clear, and for me at least some of the time, this did not always happen. Even so, this is one of the best I've read in a long time quickly polishing off the story in two readings (admittedly one lasted until early morning) the plot line, and interest level are that good. Understand this is optioned for a motion picture, will have to see it to learn what the re-writers do to the story, but more to the point, intend to recommend to my book group and fellow science fiction fans.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    "So, the thing is, I come from the world we were supposed to have."This is a time travel novel with a twist. Tom Barren travels from 2017 to the early 1960's to witness a seminal event--the testing (successful) of a perpetual energy machine. The invention of this machine leads to all sorts of wonderful developments, and the 2017 from which Tom travels is a Utopian society (although Tom does have some personal issues, including lack of a girlfriend, the accidental death of his mother, and some issues with his father). Unfortunately, when he arrives back at the test of the perpetual energy machine, he inadvertently (and quite minimally) interferes with disastrous results--the perpetual energy machine is not successful and it is abandoned. Tom is able to return back to 2017, but it is a greatly changed 2017. To him it looks dystopian; to us, it is very like the 2017 in which we live. Tom finds his mother still alive, he has a sister, and his father is no longer overbearing. When he falls in love with a girl, he begins to question his plan to return to the past to ensure that the perpetual energy machine is successfully tested, and that the ideal 2017 prevails.I enjoyed this one--it's original, but not quite as good as The Time Traveler's Wife.Recommended.3 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "All Our Wrong Todays" was a sci-fi masterpiece. Imagine that, through a series of unfortunate events, you went back in time to a pivotal moment and messed up the world you knew- billions of people no longer exist, and billions more that never existed now do exist. Tom lived "today" in 2016, but it was a different today than the today we know. Tom's today was like the Jetsons where food was made perfectly from a polymer, climate change was not a problem, and teleportation and hovercars were normal ways to get around. Through a series of events, he travels back to 1965 and the 2016 he returns to is our 2016- not his. This was one of the best adult science fiction novels I have read this year. It actually reads a bit like YA but definitely has adult content. The sci-fi elements were incredibly well done and thought provoking (how do we know which alternate reality is the "right" one- if such a concept could exist? How could time travel change our own existence?). The writing style is also really unique and really drew me in- it's as if Tom is talking to his best friend (the reader) about this crazy story that happened and it's impossible to stop listening to his insane tale (which still carries a certain amount of sense to it). For some realities, we are already living in a dystopian fiction. This thought- that our current reality could actually be a dystopian reality- was also really intriguing (because for Tom, that is how our 2016 appears). This is one of the most reasonable books about time travel I have ever read. There was a certain amount of sense and possibility about it. The way the tale was woven absolutely seamlessly was beyond fantastic. Tom is a character that was easy to like and understand- in his reality, all of his genius (if you can call it that) was random. He was meandering through his life with little purpose. Over 30 years old, he is still trying to find his way, and learning the trick that actually, no one has it all figured out- we're all faking our way through life as best as we can. He finds some purpose and changes the very fabric of his (and everyone's) existence.This is definitely an adult book with mentions of sexual relationships and conception/abortion (although nothing is described in detail). As a note/warning, there are mentions of sexual contact that are hazy in terms of consent. The women involved do not seem to view it as a nonconsensual, but it was definitely outside of their comfort zones/really seemed to belong to the sexual assault category. It is not described in detail but is still worth mentioning for readers who might prefer to stay away from this. Overall, this was a fascinating sci-fi story which takes the reader on a journey through time, possibilities, and love (a constant thread of life) and forcing them to consider endless alternate realities. This is a book I won't easily forget. Please note that I received an ARC from the publisher through netgalley. All opinions are my own.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have to confess that time travel books are not my favorites and the whole concept is just nonsensical to me. Nevertheless the premise of this one sounded interesting. I expected to like this book more than I did, however there were just too many things about it that annoyed me. On the other hand, I didn't stop reading it, so it did have some redeeming virtues. I liked the science parts but none of the philosophy or romance.The author seems to have really wanted to write a love story but felt he had to write a manly sci fi version rather than the sappy, soft focus romance he craved. The problem is that I wasn't interested in the slightest in either of the love stories in this book. Frankly, if you can time travel and the only thing you can think of to do with this ability is to have sex with your girlfriend in different timelines then I think less of you (and of the author). The protagonist in this first person narrative is Tom Barren (or John Barren in the altered timeline). In the utopian 2016 timeline, Tom is something of a screwup who gets assigned to a time travel project only because his father is the genius who is running it. Tom develops a crush on another member of the team, Penelope, who is basically unloveable but way out of his league. The mission goes awry and Tom winds up changing history, leaving us with the sorry state of present-day 2016 (in which Tom is called John and Penelope is called Penny and they are madly in love). The author explains the fact that Tom/John still exists by saying: "The fact of my existence warped chronology to ensure my existence." I hope that clarifies things for you. There is a long-winded, set up to the plot. The author seemed to have recognized this but couldn't restrain himself and wasn't contained by an editor. At about the 25% point in the book Tom says "...I'm like a bad date who spends the whole time talking about their ex and insists it's so you can get to know them better..." Up to this point it did feel like a bad date, and I tuned out a lot of his narcissistic narrative. That's a problem with the first person point of view in a book, and Tom is an extremely whiny narrator. For unknown reasons, the plot is recapped every few chapters in the beginning of the book. Totally unnecessary since at this point nothing very complicated is happening, but if you want, you could just read the recaps and not miss anything important. The book comments on or refers to itself often. In one way this makes the narrator more appealing because he recognizes and comments on his own obnoxious behavior. But I'm not really cool enough to be comfortable with a meta narrative like this. In the altered 2016 Tom/John is torn about what to do. He doesn't want to lose Penny and the loving family that doesn't exist in the real 2016. However he has ruined the world, so you would think that he would want to fix that, to hell with Penny. But this is a love story. The last 20% of the book makes almost no sense at all (or even less sense than the rest of the book) and I almost deducted a star from my rating to reflect how much I disliked the conclusion of this book.I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a tale about time travel and alternate realities. The entire book is written as a memoir. Tom is the main character. He is the bumbling, mediocre son a great man who has just invented a time machine. Tom lives in an alternate reality of 2016. In this version of 2016, life is like a sci-fi movie with futuristic buildings and inventions. However, Tom travels in the time machine and winds up changing the life that he has known. Tom wakes up in a new 2016 that is the same world that we know.The story was creative and intriguing. The beginning of the book starts out with very detailed explanations of how time travel and alternate realities work. It can be a bit confusing, but it was not necessary to understand it fully to enjoy the book.There were times in the book that the main character Tom seemed to ramble on for pages and pages about his feelings and thoughts. I actually had to skim over those pages and lost nothing to the detail of the plot.I received a complimentary e-book from the publisher in exchange for a review.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Okay first thing of all I HATE books about Time Travel!! I'm don't care who writes them, they generally suck more than the guy trying to get the juice out of a lime after a shot of tequila. But this? This is entirely something else.

    I wish I possessed a fraction of both the imagination and talent of the author, he put thought provoking ideas together word after word, line after line and chapter after engrossing chapter.

    I don't want to give anything away, but the author also showed the many facets of love.

    Excellent job!!!!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A great novel to hear in the author's own voice.