The Time Traveler's Wife - a book reivew.

This is about the third time I've tried to write this, first on a facebook book site that I couldn't get to work and then here on my blog but I tried to get technical and thorough and couldn't concentrate and got very aggravated with myself and gave up. So here is a quick and easy review of The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I wanted to read this book because it had garnered lots of accolades and had a neat premise but I really didn't expect a whole lot from it except for a maybe a good love story, I figured it would be a Nicholas Sparksian book and in the end that's pretty much what it was. The beginning of this book however was surprisingly good and I wish it could have carried through to the end. The beginning contains most of the time traveling and it's great how the main characters Clare and Henry meet. Clare is six and Henry in his thirties the first time Clare meets Henry, however Clare and Henry are both in their twenties when Henry first meets Clare. The beginning has lots of the fantasy side of the story as well as lots of foreshadowing of both romance and mayhem to come. Then we get to the middle of the story, which unfortunately is the Achilles heel of many a writer, and the story slows ,way, down. Clare and Henry spend much of the time in sequential time, getting married, trying to conceive, trying to find out what causes Henry's time traveling and basically trying to live a 'normal' life. Once or twice the author goes back and shows Henry coming back to the present from one of the times he spent with Clare in her past and I wish she had done more of this in the middle of the book and perhaps shown more of the future, I think this would have buoyed the middle more. Then we come to the third part of the book that, for the sake of argument, will call the end. I really liked parts of the ending and really disliked parts of it as well. There's plenty of room for tears (and really this is where it gets real Sparksish) but I couldn't get to emotional over it for being aggravated at the writer for taking an interesting story down a maudlin chick-lit path. That being said the ending isn't all bad, there are some redeeming qualities to it as well. When I finished the book and my wife asked me how I liked it, I wasn't real sure how to answer. Finally I said yes, mostly. Would I recommend it? It's got some language and sexual scenes that would keep me from loaning it to my mom or daughter but for my peers I'd say if you'd like a possibly tear jerking love story with an interesting twist , a sort of fantasy chick-lit, then go for it.