A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

An enchanting debut and a spellbinding tale of fate and belief in the bonds of love, The Time Traveler's Wife is destined to captivate readers for years to come.

It is a strange yet interesting novel. It draws you in from the very beginning so that you won't want to put the book down until everything unfolds. At the beginning I really enjoyed the book and how the story was progressing. But after Clare turns 20, the story seemed to be missing something. I can't quite put my finger on it but something was bugging me- maybe it was the f- words.
I do feel that the novel could have been more enjoyable if the writing had not been so bawdy.
The story is compelling, interesting, and even sad. I admit, I cried at the end. Henry and Clare's story is unlike anything I have read before.
Overall, the story made me read til late into the night and that's a good thing. I loved bits of it and hated others.

I expected this to be a nice sappy clean love story but including things like Henry's 15 yro fling with himself was a bit much for me. If you can stomach that sort of thing, go for it.

This is my favorite book I've read yet. It has everything I look for in a good story. I wish I could find more books with similar qualities.

Waiting is a chore, and a chore done very well by Clare Abshire, heroine of The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, who beautifully displays the art of domestic patience while she waits for Henry to appear to her. The Time Traveler's Wife is a story composed largely of angst-ridden romance of an adolescent.

Clare meets Henry when she's six years old, and is immediately amazed by this naked man who appears in the meadow and vanishes before her eyes. He provides a list of dates where she can meet him in bring him coffee and clothes and leaves her with the notion that she and him become very close in the years to come. And so begins a story of adolescent romance that borders on pedophilia.

A good portion of the book is set in Clare's adolescence, and during this hormone saturated period she demonstrations periods of fickleness such as wanting to know about the future and then complaining that everything is already planned out for her. Then when she finally does meet Henry, she is disappointed that he is not the man she meets in the meadow but an insufferable drug addict.

The book is set up so that the larger sections are divided by the perspectives of Henry and Clare. I found this format hard to enjoy, because it seems like Niffenegger is unable to give Henry or Clare a clear voice. There are times where they both talk in flowery poetic language and times where they both speak as though they're narrating a journey for a police report. This particularly comes across when a minor character called Kimy, who is a Korean immigrant, speaks both broken and perfect English in the same scene several times. Making it impossible to tell who was narrating that section.

While the storyline intrigued me, I found that there were times the book got a little long winded with scenes that did nothing to advance the plot. There are several scenes about Clare working in her art studio but they never, specifically towards the end, amount to anything that satisfies the reader.

However, the last nail in the coffin for this book, was Niffenegger's lack of education in genetics. She makes it known early on that Henry's ability to time travel did not come about till he was a boy, however, when Henry and Clare decide to conceive she decides to activate this genetic trait during gestation with no real explanation or support given. Even for someone who has a basic understanding of genetics, the idea seems a little far-fetched.

At the end of the day, when you consider The Time Traveler's Wife, you have to realize that mass taste probably isn't something you should look for in your next read. While the story is good, if your taste runs more towards traditional science fiction, I would look elsewhere.

FINAL GRADE: C-

Oh, my! I enjoyed this book but I still feel pretty conflicted about how "good" I really think it was. It was an original twist on the traditional boy-meets-girl-boy-and-girl-fall-in-love love story. It was interesting. However, it almost feels like it was written by someone with multiple writing personalities. The writing was far from perfect...some parts were so descriptive that the story jumped from the page and others were just bland. I liked Clare and Henry at some points in the book and at others I just really didn't like them. It was often very touching and at other times really crass. Several times the story was incredibly heartbreaking, making me want to cry...and yet I just couldn't. That being said, it was still a very decent book. It kind of made me tired to read it...but that could just be because the very thought of time travel sends my brain into overdrive thinking of the possibilities and impossibilities...the problems...oy, it's exhausting to think about...maybe that distracted me a little bit. I don't know. I guess I would recommend this book; it's a pretty quick read.