The Time Traveler's Wife

While not perhaps a “romance” novel in the established-formula sense, this book is achingly romantic. This epic story truly focuses on the gradual development of the two protagonists’ relationship and how time travel both created and challenged their love. This book ignited my passion for magic-realism romantic novels and remains one of my top books of all time.

I adore the contrast of romantic love between two seemingly destined souls and the brutality of some events caused by Henry’s uncontrolled time travel. There’s also the tricky angle of the age gap (only sometimes, depending on where Henry and Clare are… show more.

This is a less controversial take. This one is a love story (though some readers now consider it problematic given the characters' age gap at certain periods of time travel). That said, it is not considered a romance, it is a love story, and one that is also hard to put into a box.

There are elements of magical realism, yet it’s entirely rooted in a very realistic relationship and marriage. The love between Clare and Henry is so visceral. There were so many beautiful lines that lived rent-free in my head, and it was one of the books that… show more.

Time travel books aren’t uncommon, but it’s rare to find one that uses time as the hook for an emotional story rather than the more familiar sci-fi/adventure tropes. I love that Niffenegger sidesteps story-sapping technobabble, making this a story about people, not sci-fi hardware.

I’m a sucker for a time travel story that’s intricately but logically constructed, and this book certainly falls into that category, but it’s about much more than plot mechanics. Instead, it focuses firmly on the emotional toll time travel places on Henry, our titular temporal voyager, and his eventual wife, Clare. The book struck a chord… show more.

A modern classic, this beautifully crafted fusion of romance and speculative fiction has endured as my top pick among time travel novels. The story follows Henry DeTamble, who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare, his wife, who must cope with Henry's unpredictable absences and reappearances.

I adored this book for so many reasons, but it was its moving portrayal of Henry and Clare's resilience in the face of uncontrollable circumstances that captured my heart so completely.

Furthermore, I appreciated the author's nuanced treatment of the time travel component, foregoing complex scientific explanations to maintain the story's focus on the fundamental… show more.

Time travel is one of those superpowers that I have always found thrilling, yet there are very few convincing examples of it in fiction. The genius of this book is that time travel is presented as a disease. Henry has no control over when or where he is swept away, and every trip revolves around his own life, so he doesn’t ever meet Napoleon or Shakespeare.

What I love most about the story is how it illuminates so many angles of a romantic relationship that are never normally illuminated–and how Henry keeps finding himself naked and throwing up. The last… show more.

I enjoy the occasional romance, but often want something more than a traditional linear structure with predictable character trajectories, and The Time Traveler’s Wife won me over completely.

Not only does it play with the concept of time, pitting two characters in a relationship with one another at various non-sequential points in their lives (Henry meets Clare when she’s six and he’s thirty-six, they get married when she’s twenty-two and he’s thirty!), but it does it oh-so-convincingly. What’s more, it tells a superb love story at the same time—one of the best.

This book captivated me the moment I heard the idea.

The concept that a man could have time-code errors in his genetic code that throws him randomly into different periods of his life fascinated me. Pairing it with a heart-warming love story where the couple meet when Henry is 36 years and Clare, five and their struggles with his condition is the icing on the cake.

This is an eloquently-written love story that involves you immediately, together with an idea that’s thoughtful and original. Despite the hopelessness of his condition, it ends so upliftingly well. It’s a story I’ve returned… show more.

It was the concept that sucked me in right from the start: A regular guy who is diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock is reset and he finds himself hurled through time to moments of emotional gravity from his life, past, present, and future, with no control over when it happens and where in time he is sent. 

He meets the love of his life when he was thirty-six and she was six, yet they marry when he was thirty-one and she was twenty-three! I mean, really!?! Talk about ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances.

A great concept… show more.

OK, so this one goes a bit further than blurring reality, to feature a man with a rare genetic disease that means the stages of his life are lived in a seemingly random order.

It doesn’t obey the laws of physics, but according to the rules of storytelling, it's astonishingly effective at provoking a powerful emotional response from readers. The final meeting of the doomed couple, which she must wait years to reach, and which comes long after his earlier death, is one of the most emotional passages I’ve ever read.

As a whole the book teaches us that every… show more.

I’ve always been drawn to time travel stories – Back To The Future is my favourite film of all time, and it’s also why my debut, had a large dollop of time travel in it.

The Time Traveler’s Wife tells the story of Henry and Clare whose love story is doomed from the start – Henry inadvertently travels through time, and only meets Clare at certain points in her life. I’m fascinated not only by the idea of time travel, but also by the idea that love can conquer anything – even not being in the same time.

A huge,… show more.