Reviews

Incomplete character development...too much explaining *that* people were a certain way, rather than *how*. Wanted to love it, but felt unsatisfied early on.

Struggled with the audiobook narrator's attempt at a British accent, too. Took me out of the story.

zilliah's review against another edition

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3.0

It had some good elements and some bad ones which averaged out to it being a pretty ok book. Felt very focused on Family Emotions and less on actually building healthy emotional attachments between characters, because some of the ways the main character behaved....yikes. The plot mostly makes sense if you squint and ignore your internal voice saying "hey, wait a second..."

But hey, if you want to be emotional about time travel tearing families apart and are fine with skimming over some inconvenient details, you'd probably like this one a lot. I didn't vibe with it much, but I can see how some people would love it.

Also,

Spoiler

when they revealed the new name of the daughter, I thought she was going to be the mother of the football player he hated. Which would have been funny! Because she was named after the dog who was named after the football player, do you get it do y

drellejay's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Risks are taken for love. A book with diificult moral conundrums and suspense, paired with humour and wonder.

casey550's review against another edition

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3.0

It was not bad..a little flat in some places. Not got much better at the end.

bibliophileiz's review against another edition

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5.0

I loved this book. It's probably my favorite of all the books I've read this year.

Here and Now and Then is about a time travel agent from the year 2142 who gets stuck in the late 1990s and ends up staying in the past for 18 years before his organization sends retrieval agents to pick him up. By that time, he has a new job and a family, including a daughter who is technically not supposed to exist, so the book is all about him trying to reconcile two lives, all while the time travel organization he works for becomes suspicious of what he might have changed by existing so long in the past.

This was both a great piece of time travel fiction (up there with "Blink" from Doctor Who -- actually there are a lot of Doctor Who references in this book) and a wonderful father-daughter story. The characters were all well-developed and the plot engaging and complex while still being easy to follow. It seems like this was author Mike Chen's first book, so I will definitely be keeping an eye out for more of his work, because this was stellar.

psteiner's review against another edition

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3.0

TBD

chattycabi's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Everything about this book is good. The plots fun, the characters are well-developed, the world building is interesting, the writing is great. And yet, I still can’t place why this wasn’t a five star read for me. It just didn’t capture me the way I wanted.

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