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Unhappenings Kindle Edition

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 1,747 ratings

When Nigel Walden is fourteen, the UNHAPPENINGS begin. His first girlfriend disappears the day after their first kiss with no indication she ever existed. This retroactive change is the first of many only he seems to notice.

Several years later, when Nigel is visited by two people from his future, he hopes they can explain why the past keeps rewriting itself around him. But the enigmatic young guide shares very little, and the haggard, incoherent, elderly version of himself is even less reliable. His search for answers takes him fifty-two years forward in time, where he finds himself stranded and alone.

And then he meets Helen.

Brilliant, hilarious and beautiful, she captivates him. But Nigel’s relationships always unhappen, and if they get close it could be fatal for her. Worse, according to the young guide, just by entering Helen’s life, Nigel has already set into motion events that will have catastrophic consequences. In his efforts to reverse this, and to find a way to remain with Helen, he discovers the disturbing truth about the unhappenings, and the role he and his future self have played all along.

Equal parts time-travel adventure and tragic love story, Unhappenings is a tale of gravely bad choices, and Nigel’s struggle not to become what he sees in the preview of his worst self.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Edward Aubry is a graduate of Wesleyan University, with a degree in music composition. Improbably, this preceded a career as a teacher of high school mathematics and creative writing.

Over the last few years, he has gradually transitioned from being a teacher who writes novels on the side to a novelist who teaches to support his family. He is also a poet, his sole published work in that form being the sixteen stanza "The History of Mathematics."

He now lives in rural Pennsylvania with his wife and three spectacular daughters, where he fills his non-teaching hours spinning tales of time-travel, wise-cracking pixies, and an assortment of other impossible things.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07PPWXWKK
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 14, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3530 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 426 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 1,747 ratings

About the author

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Edward Aubry
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Edward Aubry is a graduate of Wesleyan University, with a degree in music composition. Improbably, this preceded a career as a teacher of high school mathematics and creative writing.

Over the last few years, he has gradually transitioned from being a teacher who writes novels on the side to a novelist who teaches to support his family. He is also a poet, his sole published work in that form being the sixteen stanza “The History of Mathematics.”

He now lives in rural Pennsylvania with his wife and three spectacular children, where he fills his non-teaching hours spinning tales of time-travel, wise-cracking pixies, and an assortment of other impossible things.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
1,747 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the story captivating and intriguing. They describe the book as an interesting read with clear explanations of time travel paradoxes. Readers find the book engaging and satisfying. The characters are well-developed and human, making them relatable. The depth of knowledge about the science behind the ideas is appreciated. However, some readers feel the ending was disappointing.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

236 customers mention "Story quality"186 positive50 negative

Customers find the story captivating and intriguing. They appreciate the unique plotline and how the mysteries unfold within short chapters. The concept is entertaining and grips readers' imaginations throughout.

"...It sounds confusing, but the author lets the story tell itself and the causes and effects of peoples' actions make it all very understandable...." Read more

"...However I give props to the scope of the story, the author is all in, he just goes for it, and sometimes that's just what you're looking for...." Read more

"...I definitely still recommend this to any reader who enjoys romance and/or science fiction, and especially for those who like stories with both..." Read more

"...PROS: I enjoyed this novel and found the premise intriguing. It was a page-turner. Read when you can do so uninterrupted...." Read more

153 customers mention "Readability"147 positive6 negative

Customers find the book engaging and interesting. They say it's a great read from a talented author, with some wonderful quotable parts. While some parts can be confusing, they consider it worth reading.

"I just finished this book, staying up all night to do so. This is an incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring story about love...." Read more

"I love a good time travel story. This is a pretty decent one...." Read more

"...This book has a lot of promise...." Read more

"...PROS: I enjoyed this novel and found the premise intriguing. It was a page-turner. Read when you can do so uninterrupted...." Read more

113 customers mention "Time travel"103 positive10 negative

Customers find the book's take on time travel interesting. They appreciate the clear and concise explanations of time travel paradoxes. The story is original, covering all aspects of life in time. Readers like that some of the time travel restrictions are eliminated.

"...The time travel isn't difficult to understand...." Read more

"I love a good time travel story. This is a pretty decent one...." Read more

"...Excited by the clear and concise explanations of time travel paradoxes..." Read more

"...IMO it is one of the better “Time Travel” novels...." Read more

57 customers mention "Enjoyment"57 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and satisfying. They say it's an original take on time travel that keeps their attention throughout. The plot keeps them hooked and leaves them with a good feeling. The audio recording is excellent, making drive time go by.

"...Finally, there is a good balance between being enjoyable for unscientific and scientific audiences...." Read more

"...This novel just kept going and going and held my interest throughout. IMO it is one of the better “Time Travel” novels...." Read more

"...something about it that tickles my brain in a way that is incredibly entertaining...." Read more

"...The audio version was quite good. The narrator did a good job with all the characters and their emotions...." Read more

51 customers mention "Character development"48 positive3 negative

Customers find the characters well-developed and human. They appreciate the limited number of characters, which makes following them through changing time and space easier. The final placement of the characters works well.

"...There are three main characters. Even before you find out how they are connected, you know their connection is incredibly special and complicated...." Read more

"...The writing is solid, the characters are interesting, the plot moves at a good pace with a mixture of contemplation and action, and there are..." Read more

"...Well written and filled with some very enjoyable characters it's an intriguing story involving some quite strange unhappenings!..." Read more

"...I really enjoyed this book. The characters are well developed and it is fast-paced action...." Read more

21 customers mention "Depth"21 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's depth. They find the character development insightful, with the author clearly having done extensive research on the topic. The book provides detailed explanations of the science behind the ideas without being overly technical. It's a great concept book that makes perfect sense to those with a scientific mindset and ability to comprehend complex concepts.

"...The characters are beautifully written. Their complexities as humans and their competing emotions are so well-written that I felt them myself...." Read more

"...However I give props to the scope of the story, the author is all in, he just goes for it, and sometimes that's just what you're looking for...." Read more

"When I began reading this book, I was excited. Excited by the freshness of the topic, by the alternate reality this book presented...." Read more

"...are a "how does this work" person, there was detail about the science behind the ideas, while not dragging down the movement of the story...." Read more

79 customers mention "Writing quality"48 positive31 negative

Customers have mixed reviews about the writing quality. Some find it well-written with brilliant dialogue and a tightly controlled plotline. They appreciate the first-person narrative voice and interesting travel perspective. However, others find the book disjointed and difficult to follow at times, with tedious reading and pages with few words. The writing style is described as workmanlike.

"...The writing is solid, the characters are interesting, the plot moves at a good pace with a mixture of contemplation and action, and there are..." Read more

"...a 5 out of 5, so the average is around 4 stars, iThe writing is somewhat workman-like, and you won't be getting something say in the league of a..." Read more

"...Read when you can do so uninterrupted. The author writes grammatically and without the errors in conventions sometimes seen in independently-..." Read more

"...Well written and filled with some very enjoyable characters it's an intriguing story involving some quite strange unhappenings!..." Read more

42 customers mention "Pacing"28 positive14 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some find it fast with short chapters, making it an interesting and quick read. Others feel it's slow and repetitive for the first half. The last third or so has too fast a tempo, making it hard to keep up.

"...This novel is complete! This novel just kept going and going and held my interest throughout...." Read more

"...The characters are well developed and it is fast-paced action...." Read more

"...The meeting is short. He learns one fact; sometimes it is important, most often the fact is not important. Repeat in the next chapter. Repeat...." Read more

"...The stakes get higher and higher as the story goes, indicating wonderful pacing...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2015
    I just finished this book, staying up all night to do so. This is an incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring story about love. You would think from the title, and from much of the book actually, that this was a science fiction story about time travel. Time travel is just the device used to tell the tale of two men who nearly destroyed the world because of their love for one remarkable woman.

    There is a lot of talk about time travel. There is a lot of time traveling. There is work going on about time travel, but it never seems to amount to much. We hear people are working on different aspects of time travel, but we never really know what they are doing. The "Unhappenings" of the book's title are the result of time travel--and also the result of attempting to undo time travel. It sounds confusing, but the author lets the story tell itself and the causes and effects of peoples' actions make it all very understandable.

    There are three main characters. Even before you find out how they are connected, you know their connection is incredibly special and complicated. Their relationships are the only constants in a book where the entire world changes over and over again. Time is used as a weapon and these three people have to fight to put things right time and again. At times it seems they don't like each other very much, but that is just temporary. At the core, they love each other more than anything, even when they have to do terrible things that change them forever.

    At its heart, there's a question that the reader has to answer for him/herself: When chasing a monster, how do you stop yourself from becoming a monster? Can it be done? If you keep doing terrible things to fix what a monster has done, are you now a monster, too? The real monster of the book is rarely in the story. He didn't start out that way, but he did one thing that destroyed his life and set the course for all the destruction to follow. He fell in love.

    The characters are beautifully written. Their complexities as humans and their competing emotions are so well-written that I felt them myself. The main character's life is defined by hopelessness and loneliness, and I felt his pain as his world kept getting ripped away from him and he isolated himself to avoid the hurt. The main time-traveling character starts as a teenager, but the weight of all she sees--and unsees--takes a toll on her through the years until she nearly loses herself.

    This is a great book for fans of science fiction and for fans of heart-breaking love stories. The time travel isn't difficult to understand. The book is very funny at times--the characters are intelligent and witty--and will then make you feel like crying at other times. This is a great book. I highly recommend it.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2016
    I love a good time travel story. This is a pretty decent one. I'm giving the writing a 3 out of 5, but the plotting and technical imagination a 5 out of 5, so the average is around 4 stars, iThe writing is somewhat workman-like, and you won't be getting something say in the league of a Robert Silverberg or Gene Wolfe at this point, but of course that's a very high bar to measure against. However I give props to the scope of the story, the author is all in, he just goes for it, and sometimes that's just what you're looking for. To make an analogy to pop culture , it's like watching American Horror Story or Workaholics or Silicon Valley or Blue Mountain State, those shows just set up a premise and dive in fully committed to wherever it leads, without second guessing too much about every detail dovetailing or putting a toe in the water to test the temperature before jumping in with an idea or plot device.

    Unhappenings just marched right in, stepping around paradoxes, and getting in deeper and deeper, regardless of if it could actually be untangled by the reader at some point. Sort of like that movie Primer. The stakes keep getting higher as a cat and mouse game is played out in time. What was maybe the most satisfying is that unlike pap like The Time Travelers Wife, the fact that any sort of macroscopically usable time travel would likely cause exponentially sweeping changes and provide planet-shattering power to the people using it is extrapolated rather than ignored. At some point, I'm just reading to see what apocalyptic alternate reality gets swapped in next.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2015
    After reading this author's first two novels, Static Mayhem and Caprice, and after finding out that the movie rights for this book had been picked up, I quickly purchased a copy.

    The main character is Nigel Walden, who is also known as Graham Walden. Starting at a fairly young age, things begin to "un-happen" in Nigel's life. After having a dog for several years with a certain name, the dog was suddenly a cat, with the same name. As far as everyone else knew, there had never been a dog and had always been a cat. After making friends with someone in his class, that someone was suddenly not there. When Nigel inquired, with his teachers and his friends, about the missing friend, he was met with blank stares. No one knew who he was talking about, even though the missing classmate had attended that school for several years.

    As Nigel got older, these episodes became bigger and more consequential. In high school, Nigel started to fall in love with a girl named Carrie Wolfe. After dating her for several months, he called Carrie's home and asked for her, only to be told by her mother that Carrie had passed away many years previously.

    With the increasing severity of these episodes, Nigel began to keep his distance from people, out of both self-protection and out of concern for possible consequences for the other people. Then, things got very confusing when he encountered . . . that would be giving away too much of the story. I will just say that he encountered someone that unequivocally convinced him that something very important and world-changing would eventually exist that would change his life and he would be a major part of it.

    This book has elements that would traditionally be seen as appealing to male readers (science fiction) and elements that are more often seen as appealing to female readers (romance). The two factors are blended well and neither really predominates. If this book does become a movie, I am guessing it will be, among other things, a date movie.

    Of the three books by this author that I have read, I would identify this one is tied for second in how much I liked it, with Static Mayhem being ahead of the other two. I definitely still recommend this to any reader who enjoys romance and/or science fiction, and especially for those who like stories with both elements. The writing is solid, the characters are interesting, the plot moves at a good pace with a mixture of contemplation and action, and there are definite surprises along the way. It is told in a mixture of first-person and second-person narrative.
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible
    Reviewed in Australia on October 1, 2019
    What a complicated and incredible piece of writing. Could not put this book down. Just a fabulous read. So moving.
  • G. Côté
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, original and well written!
    Reviewed in Canada on April 13, 2016
    Totally impossible, yet very interesting. Had to put it down several times, to take time to digest it. The bewildered characters' feelings are very nicely rendered and feel real.
  • Sparkleton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, but Kindle edition could be reformatted
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 19, 2016
    I was a bit dubious about this as writing about time travel can certainly get confusing and out of hand, but the author kept the plots and time travel theories nicely tied together and including Nigel's "frame of reference" when travelling back and forth was a nice touch.

    The only minor thing is that the chapters start by telling you which chapter you are on and the dates, but some were hard to read and there were cases of letters overlapping each other in my Kindle edition or there being a dark image bar hiding some of the text, but it was still very easy to work out where they were in the timeline and the main text was unaffected.
  • SM
    4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
    Reviewed in India on March 15, 2016
    Good
  • Dragonlee
    4.0 out of 5 stars A darn good read.
    Reviewed in Canada on May 26, 2016
    How refreshing to read something entirely different. Don't let the slow beginning stop you - it's gets nothing but better. Well written and finely edited. Recommended.

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