I was fooled by this book’s cool title…

So, the guy time travels, ok?
Let’s give a short summary of the, for want of a better word, plot:
- they meet
- (melo)dramatic stuff happens
- they fall in love
- more melodramatic stuff
- they have sex (my goodness, do they have a lot of sex)
- yep, melodramatic stuff.
- they play pool for four pages
- they play some boardgame for another four pages
- sex and melodramatic stuff
- a lot of eating, having pedantic conversations with friends and with each other
- they can’t have kids
- they have one anyway
- he gets injured
- he dies
O and by the way: he time travels. The time traveling is for most of the book a minor inconvenience, sometimes a curiosity, but never a plot element until the last fifty pages or so. This is a (very) cliche romance plot, that would (and did) make a nice romantic, tragic comedy movie. But this is. not. about. time. travel. So don’t put it in the title!
Every time travel chance was missed: time paradoxes, messages sent and received, parallel situations seen from different perspectives, surprises, etc. Etc. Only at the end of the book things get moving and a few (but only very few) puzzle pieces fall into place. Most of the story is told roughly chronologically - in a time travel book. Another missed opportunity.
So nothing good? Well, when the time traveling does get interesting, the cleverly creative concept of the book starts to shine. And when it does, it’s quite great. It just so rarely happens.
The writing style is nice, funny, intelligent. Conversations are interesting. Characterization is well done, both with the main characters and all the minor ones. This makes the book bearable and gets you through the first 100 pages, that feel like that much exposition, since nothing really happens. Minor problems with relatives get resolved easily and the involuntary time travel never leads to serious, lasting trouble.
Then the story starts to drag until they start trying to have a kid, around page 300. From there, the story gets better. As with so many books of 300+ pages, this book would have benefitted greatly from cutting about 100 of them. I even think it would have made a brilliant short story.
As it stands: a star for the concept, one for the characters and one for the writing style. The ending deserves three stars, most of the rest of the book, one or two at best. Could have been a great book, unfortunately a disappointment.