Book Review · Books

The Psychology of Time Travel – Kate Mascarenhas [BOOK REVIEW]

The Psychology of Time Travel Kate Mascarenhas book review books blog diary of difference diaryofdifference goodreads netgalley arc novel publisher crooked lane books penguin uk england amazon bookblog reading

★★★

I love the idea of time travelling and I love the idea of time travelling books. That is the main reason why I chose to read this ARC copy. The synopsis sounded intriguing, and the cover was gorgeous. I don’t have much experience reading time travelling books. I still believe the synopsis is intriguing and the cover is gorgeous, but I am not satisfied with the feelings this book left me, after I read the last chapter.

The story begins when four ladies in the early 1960s work together and build the first time travel machine. And they are surrounded by curious people and media, and one of them has a breakdown and is expelled from the project, as she is a risk to herself and others. But they don’t just exclude her from their project, but from their whole lives, and time travelling altogether.

”Sometimes we want proximity and a crowd gives us the excuse.”

And many years after, when time travelling is something everyone knows about, secrets start to be revealed, little by little, and a murder happens without explanation. A few young women, completely unrelated and with different missions will try to get their way into the whole time-travel business, and try to figure the answers to their questions.

In The Psychology of Time Travel, one is certain – you will flow through time and places like never before. One chapter it’s 1967, and the next one, it’s 2015. You will meet a lady and her young self, her old self, and her current self, all at one place, talking to each other, or simultaneously performing a dancing act. You will get to see a world very well created, a complex structure of how time travel might work, and details that you wouldn’t thought of checking twice.

I couldn’t connect to any character. Maybe there were too many. The chapters were very short, and they travelled through years so quickly, that I couldn’t catch up. Catching up with the plot of a book, and figuring out what is going on while being presented things so fast is very frustrating. It’s like watching a movie in a foreign language, the subtitles being your only way of gathering information, and they disappear instantly, without you having a chance to understand.

The romance in this book was another thing that bothered me. While we get a lot of romantic relationships going around, one particularly threw me off my feet. A love story where one girl is in love with another. This is the completely realistic part. But the unrealistic one was that one girl lives in the present, and the other is a time-traveller in the past – so even though they are currently (technically) the same age, in reality one is in the mid 20s, and the other in the mid 80s. I couldn’t process this, or agree with it.

”You couldn’t get involved with someone who spent most of their life in a different time period from you.”

I am sure I would have loved the characters, have I had more chances to get to know them. They showed signs of bravery, and goals and hopes for a better tomorrow, with a spark unlike any others. But it all lasted so short, before we switched to another character, and so on.

Even though this one didn’t work for me – I still encourage you to give it a go, if you are a fan of time travel. The idea of time travelling is very well done, and deserves to be discussed.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books, for providing me an ARC copy of The Psychology of Time Travel in exchange for an honest review.

Here’s to better books, and here’s to a better tomorrow! 

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Book Review · Books

Some Sunny Day – Madge Lambert [BOOK REVIEW]

some sunny day madge lambert book review blog diary of difference diaryofdifference netgalley goodreads author war world nurse love romance

★★★

Some Sunny Day was one of those books that go slowly, and tell a story of another times, reviving memories and emotions. A story of a lady that is sent to India to take care for the British Soldiers in the Second World War.

A beautiful memoir, full of lively descriptions that make the scenes more realistic. A powerful story of love, bravery, tragedy, sacrifices and hope.

Continue reading “Some Sunny Day – Madge Lambert [BOOK REVIEW]”

Book Review · Books

The Plus One – Sophia Money-Coutts

the plus one sophia Money-COutts Netgalley ARC Book review books blog diary of difference

I love romance, and chick-literature. I love fast reads, and enjoyable nonsense. The cover looked so cute, and when I got approved the ARC on The Plus One from Sophia Money-Coutts on Netgalley, I was excited to read it. And then, it all started going downhill…

The Plus One is a book about Polly Spencer. She is thirty, single and works for Posh! Magazine. I didn’t like the Poly Spencer of now, and I thought, this might be a book where the main character is a lady with no self-respect, gets dumped, doesn’t have any ambition in life, and that’s okay. People learn, people change, or if people don’t change, they start to be happy in their own world, without bothering what others think about it.

But Polly – she is all of these things, and on top of that she is not a happy bunny. She keeps complaining about things without trying to act on it, and her day consists of her checking if the phone has a message of her ‘crush’, and asking herself eighty-six times whether to send a message first or not.

the plus one sophia Money-COutts Netgalley ARC Book review books blog diary of difference

I usually love these types of books, but not in cases where the character is just so… I don’t even have the words to explain.

And the book is full of words used too often (Shenanigans is such a lovely word, and Sophia destroyed it for me), lame pick up lines (‘I carry farm animals. I can manage you.’ – WHO SAYS THAT?), dialogues and useless waste of pages with people deciding what to eat:

‘So let’s get some onion bhajis to start. And then I’m going to have a butter chicken. And it comes with popadoms, right?’

‘Yes’ – I said, taking the menu from him.

‘And I’ll get the chicken jalfrezi. And plain rice. Mums, do we have any chutney?’

And it goes on…

At 42%, I decided to store this is my DNF stack. I really wish I had loved it, and I am so sad I didn’t.

But life is too short to read the books you don’t like…

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