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Life has approximately four perfect things in it.

One of them is Cake With Fresh Strawberries.

Another of them is Running Errands And Getting Yourself A Little Treat.

The third one is Going To A Body Of Water On A Hot Day And Swimming Until You're Very Tired And Then Air-Drying In The Sun.

And the fourth one is Time Travel Romance.

The two best rom-coms on earth (and I have seen many of them, in a misguided attempt to cure myself of emotionlessness) are About Time and Safety Not Guaranteed.

Both are quirky, funny romantic comedies with lovable main characters that kind of ignores the science of time travel in order to focus on a love story. And they are perfect movies.

So, by the same logic, I should have liked this book. AT LEAST liked. If the world was fair and just and rational, I would have loved it and given it five stars and tattooed the manuscript in a full-back tattoo to rival Ben Affleck's.

But this book was not:
- funny
- quirky
- romantic
- compelling
- populated by lovable characters.

It was:
- the kind of sad that feels like a trick
- centered around the worst romance I have ever read
- bizarrely outdated considering it's literally from the 2000s

I spend my entire life on this website and am addicted to my reading challenge, but when I was finished this book I was so overwhelmed by relief / plans to gather all copies I could find in one place in order to heckle them that I didn't mark it as read for days.

It was just that bad.

In case you are one of the few people who has had the fortune of never even hearing about this book, we follow Clare (a normal girl, if pretentiousness and perfect hair and weird art qualify as "normal") and Henry (a time traveler, de facto sex addict, and all around asshole).

The first halfish of this book follows Henry's time travels to Clare when she is...a child. At this point, Henry knows Clare (he is married to adult her), but Clare doesn't know Henry (she is MERE MONTHS OUT OF TODDLERDOM).

This section includes such fun as a little girl seeing a grown man naked, and a teenage girl who tries (successfully, eventually) to seduce a nearly 40 year old man because she has been groomed by him for her entire memorable life.

It's so funny when you consider that the author could have just...not done this. She opted into this kind of moral disturbance.

The second half(ish) occurs when a young(ish) (but still significantly older than Clare) Henry meets Clare for the first time. He doesn't know who she is, but she is like YOU'RE MY HUSBAND. And then they have to date.

In other words, the first half of this romance is Henry being in love with Clare when Clare is not in love with Henry and then the second vice versa.

In other other words, these people never CHOOSE EACH OTHER!!! It's grooming and then whatever the equivalent of grooming is for grownups!

It's gross and worst of all, it's boring.

And it doesn't get better. There is supposed to be some sort of "honeymoon period" here, which is kind of nonexistent if you like the falling in love part of romance (aka, romance itself) or are not into pedophilia (we're in the wrong place, folks), but very quickly Clare is very unhappy because Henry is never there and Henry is very unhappy because Clare is mean when he is, and he is generally more pleased with life when he is forcibly committing sex acts with Clare before she hits the age of consent. (I am not making this up. I'm barely even being dramatic.)

But then (view spoiler)[Henry dies (hide spoiler)].

Sad stories are like a trick to me at the best of times - all art that is intended to make you feel a certain way is fundamentally emotional manipulation, and more power to em but when it doesn't work it's just awkward.

This one is even sillier because these people aren't happy enough or interesting enough for their lives to be ruined, or for that ruination to inspire any sort of feeling in me. Beyond

This is the story of a woman who builds her entire life around a man who is by definition barely there, and then once he isn't there at all she continues to live a shell of an existence. In spite of (view spoiler)[his last wish being that she change that bullsh*t. (hide spoiler)]

If Clare ever lived a full life for herself, following passions or doing anything interesting at all, I might have had more complicated feelings about this. But instead she lives for more than forty years still waiting for Henry, (view spoiler)[which turns out to be one encounter when she is full on elderly, (hide spoiler)] so I can just hate it.

At least my feelings can be straightforward. That's the one upside.

This does have the kind of beautiful overwrought writing that I can get behind even as I know it's silly, but also I can't stress enough that you will not understand how different 2003 is from current day until you immerse yourself in the way we talked and treated each other in 2003.

I'm saying "we" like I wasn't 6 at the time, but still.

This was an all around nightmare.

Bottom line: So grateful I was 6 then. Books are so much better now.

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pre-review

i truly cannot stress enough that i spend every moment of my life on this website.

so if i forget to mark a book as read, that is a bad sign of miraculous proportions.

review to come / 1 star

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tbr review

sometimes i like to pretend i'm in a suburban club from 15 years ago. it's like meditation for me