The Time Traveler’s Wife has to be one of the most popular books out there. That’s why I used it for the Popsugar prompt “A book with at least one million ratings on Goodreads”—it has 1.4 million. The average rating is 3.96/5, which is pretty good for Goodreads. Normally, super popular books scare me a bit. I always want to know why people like what they like, what it is about a particular book that makes so many people love it so much.

But I’m also afraid that I won’t like it and then I’ll be that person, the one who hates the book everyone else loves and either just doesn’t talk about it or makes everyone uncomfortable.

Guess what. I’m that person when it comes to The Time Traveler’s Wife.

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TW: violence, miscarriages/infertility

This is the story of Henry and Clare. Clare is an art student and Henry has Chrono-Displacement Disorder (he time-travels). Henry met Clare when he was thirty-six and she was six. They got married when she was twenty-three and he was thirty-one. Henry leaves and enters time and space spontaneously—never knowing where he is going or when he will back.

This is a love story about two people who will endure anything to be with each other, who will wait for the person to come back home, who will fight for their relationship.

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For a 500 page book, this is a short summary. Because the book is short on plot and big on relationship building. It’s a romance novel more than anything, so this is what it’s supposed to do! This is a story about two people falling in love.

And the love story is cute! It’s every sappy thing you want from a love story. Henry and Clare are mad for each other and the love they have for each other feels genuine—it leaps off the page. The end of the book made me tear up, which is rare for me when I read, so that says something.

However, this was not a page turner, simply because it’s low on plot. There aren’t many events moving the story forward because of how much Henry jumps in out of time. The story is narrated alternately by Clare and Henry, so when Henry jumps through time, so does the reader. Thankfully, the author has small notes at the top of each heading, letting you know what the date is and how old our two main characters are. It’d be impossible to keep things straight without those.

But even with those notes, it’s difficult to build the sort of bond with characters that you get by watching them grow and mature when they are 6 in one chapter and twenty in the next!

These issues—lack of connection and plot—are personal issues. These are important things for me when I read, but that doesn’t have to be true for every single reader. I’m glad I read the book—it was cute and the writing flowed really well. The above issues are what made this a 3/5 for me.

If you like love stories and relationship-building, you’re going to love this book, I promise. If you prefer your love stories with some heavy-duty external forces to push the lovers along, skip this one.

Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 531
Rating: 3/5
Publication date: July 5, 2003
Buy: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound