Publication Date: October 17th, 2023
Read: February 8th - 9th
Rating: 3/5 stars
There’s so much to say about this book, but I’ve already talked about it so much that it almost feels like I’ve already written a review…even though I very much have not.
Let’s start with a synopsis. June Farrow has grown up knowing that she will eventually succumb to the mysterious madness/mental illness that takes every woman in her family. At the beginning of the story, she is burying her grandmother (who did indeed succumb to the madness) and hiding her own visual and auditory hallucinations from those closest to her. However, her hallucinations are getting more frequent and harder to ignore, and to make things weirder, she finds a picture of her mother with local legend, the Famous Murdered Pastor Guy, in an envelope from her grandmother. The problem is that this picture was apparently taken in 1912, and we’re supposed to be in the 2020s. The math simply does not add up. June becomes obsessed with figuring out why her mother is in a picture from 1912, and the more details she uncovers, the more weird things seem, because the woman from the past not only looks like June’s mother, she has the same name, AND also had a daughter named June. Freaky! Eventually, June has to reveal her hallucinations to close family friend Birdie, who instructs her to go through the door she’s repeatedly hallucinated the very next time she sees it.
June does this, and it turns out that the door takes her into the past. Specifically, into 1951, where she meets a man that was married to a version of herself that previously traveled to 1946 and then disappeared in 1950. This is super weird for her to experience, because he remembers her, but she doesn’t remember him, and they have a kid together. And her family from this era also remembers getting to know a version of her that June simply does not remember being. What is going on? How does all of this tie into the murder of that pastor guy? Why did the previous June leave? Why is current June remembering things from 2023 (AKA present day from the beginning of the book) that never happened? (More on that specific question later).
I really enjoyed this book while I was reading it. I was caught up in the mystery of the time travel and the murder and the family drama and the tension between June and Eamon. But when I got to the end of the book, I was just like “Oh…is that it?” And from there, the more I thought about the book, the more holes I was able to pick in it. This book was looking like swiss cheese by the time I was done explaining the plot to my mom. The build up and the journey were good, but the book just didn’t deliver well on that build-up. I’m glad I read it, and I would even recommend it (with some caveats) but I can’t really see myself rereading it, because…what would the point be.
I read this book for book club (casual flex…most of you don’t even know the joys of being a person with a book club) and everyone generally agreed that the first 100 pages are pretty weak. For reference, the first 100 pages are the part where June is in the present, before she travels back to 1951. I actually didn’t find that first chunk of the book weak while reading, but thinking back on it after having read the entire book, I think it does kind of fail to make me care about June’s present-day life. This could be fine, except I feel like the resolution of the book really needs you to care about June’s present-day life and the people in it. And I did not. So in that sense, it is indeed a weak start to the story.
Also, while the premise of the romance between June and Eamon is very compelling (they were together for 4 years but only he remembers! She both is and isn’t the person he was married to! Why did the other version of her leave? The drama of it all!), it ended up feeling like we relied way too much on June regaining her memories of her prior self to progress the romance. It didn’t feel like Eamon and June were actually getting to know each other as they are at this point in the story, but like we took a shortcut via memory restoration to get back to exactly where they were before. This was a bit disappointing because it felt like the book squanders an interesting romance premise. This book is only, what, 300 pages? It definitely could have been a bit longer and fleshed out June and Eamon’s relationship a bit more.
On the topic of relationships, the vague attempt at a love triangle felt very unnecessary. June has these memories of a relationship beginning between herself and her guy best friend in the present day (I’ve already forgotten his name…oops) and this is supposed to make her, and by extension the reader, feel kind of torn about which life she should choose. But it was like…SO obvious that we’re not actually invested in the present day relationship. Especially since all we get of it is those first 100 pages (which, as we already know, did not do the best job of making us invested in June’s life) and a couple of snippets that June remembers.
As for the time travel…there are so many rules to the time travel in this book, and if you think about any of them for like a SECOND, it feels like most of them are just there to justify the plot, in particular June’s incomprehensible plan to save future generations of Farrows from the time travel madness situation. All Farrow women will time travel at least once! You can only time travel up to 3 times, and the opportunities will randomly happen when the time travel door appears to you! Oh, and there’s a necklace that allows you to pick what year you travel to! Don’t worry about where it came from, or why the Farrow women have this whole time travel curse situation going on to begin with, because you will never find out!
The necklace in particular really annoys me. I feel like it’s only in the book to explain why June ends up going back to 1951 instead of some random time. Essentially, it’s there to make her convoluted plan work.
Even the positive reviews have people saying they don’t get how the time travel worked. I feel like that’s very damning.
And another thing! this book is fairly short, but it could have been even shorter if the characters weren’t so determined to withhold information from June at every turn. In 1951, Eamon and June’s whole family are trying to avoid police suspicion for the RECENT MURDER. Does anyone tell June anything that would help her keep her story consistent with everyone else’s? No. I guess that would be too easy. This feels especially egregious given that Eamon turns out to know who the murderer is, and it’s information that would have been really good for June to have!!! For a lot of reasons! Communication - or better justifications for a lack of communication - would have really been great to see.
OH, and there’s a piece of information that June totally could have known from the beginning of the book that she does not know. Why doesn’t she know this info? Because she looked at a news headline without actually reading the article underneath it. Later in the book, she finally actually reads the article and learns something. As a writer, I think it’s important to come up with better justifications for why your characters don’t know stuff besides “They looked up the article with the info in it, but they only read the headline.”
I know that people only reading headlines happens all the time in real life, but like, it shouldn’t be a book plot point! Not like this!
Also…there’s an author’s note at the end of this book mentioning how in the 1950s, segregation and Jim Crow laws were still a thing. It felt like an odd addition because black people are so peripheral to this story. There are some minor black characters (one in the present day and then some nameless extras in the past) but generally speaking, this story barely touches on the issues of Jim Crow laws and segregation because it barely has black characters. All of the characters who are central to the story are white, as far as I could tell. The author’s note honestly only made me ask more questions, like about the fact that June is now living in a time period where segregation is the norm, and she’ll live through the civil rights movement, and all these things. But in the cute little epilogue, June makes no mention of living through these major societal events. It’s all about the Farrow family and when different generations of it are born and die and whatnot. I guess I just think the author’s note was a weird choice.
So, yeah. I enjoyed reading this book, but I think I enjoyed dissecting it with my mom and book club even more. It’s worth reading once, for the journey and the discourse, but when you realize how annoyingly convoluted the time travel aspects are…well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Also, the mystery aspect of this book was annoyingly simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment