The good
- Fascinating premise of being able to live life over and over again, “until you get it right.”
- Interesting setting, as the book takes place in England and Germany during WWI and WWII.
- A few parts of the book are powerful, tragic, and haunting: the bombing of London during WWII; seeing the war from the other side after being trapped in Germany during WWII; and the parts with spousal abuse.
The not so good
- While some parts of the book were powerful, many other parts were boring, and I found myself tuning in and out.
- The protagonist is mostly unaware of the multiple lives—she has at most a feeling of deja vu—so the “superpower” is effectively wasted on her. Sure, we see her die in one life and avoid that cause of death in another, but it’s not really a deliberate or planned thing, and she never really reflects on this ability or what it means, and we never see the outcome of each life, so the whole thing ultimately feels a bit pointless.
Overall
A great premise that seems largely wasted. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and Recursion make much more interesting use of similar ideas.
Rating: 3 stars
Yevgeniy Brikman
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