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Nicely written, but subject to a problem that afflicts a large proportion of contemporary fiction, especially speculative novels and stories. Namely: the 'presenting' -- rather than the 'building' -- of a world that subsequently runs the risk of failing to suspend the reader's disbelief, as happened in this instance. I've had the same problem with some award-winning novels, so these books are clearly landing elsewhere, and I always go in wanting to be taken along by such works.

When you're dealing with -- as this short novel (part of a series) does -- a day that continually recurs for no apparent reason (November 18, which resets for the narrator at the end of each basically identical iteration) it surely behooves the writer to make such an outlandish setup as believable as possible. But here, what you get instead is an immediate acceptance by the partner of the protagonist that her explanation of what she is experiencing, a looping, repeating 24hrs, is almost undoubtedly the case. Very few questions asked: just shared disconcertion. This is admirable from the partner's point of view--he trusts what she's saying--but (for me) it doesn't work in fiction. It 'presents' an immediately accepted case on behalf of the reader, rather than 'building' one. It's 'baffling' to both protagonist and partner, but such bafflement is quickly and casually dispelled. Which consequently means that the protagonist's partner -- who doesn't experience repeating days, but lives each November 18 as though it's the first -- feels like little more than a prop, as opposed to a flesh and blood character, despite shorthand descriptions of an 'atomic' connection the couple apparently share.

The central conceit is initially intriguing, and there are some thought-provoking moments that consider how we allow time to become a homogenous mass, and fail to truly see things for what they are, since we're rolled into a series of run-on days. But for this reader such moments were broadly hampered by the author's insistence that we simply go along with the concept, an urging that doesn't feel earned. As a younger reader, I could easily go along with such writing. 'He's a werewolf, so it's probably a good idea to watch out when there's a full moon.' That may well have sufficed -- then. Now I need a bit more -- I need convincing substance to enable me to furnish my delusion that a man has grown full body hair and fangs. It's not enough, in this case, to tell us that Groundhog Day is really happening, so that we can move on to other plot points. We need to feel more jeopardy and more external pressure on such a seismic central idea, or, for this reader, the whole project represents no more than a slack line along which numerous ideas are haphazardly hung.