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Ned Summers is a teenager in the small Oregon town of Middle Falls in the 1950s. His life gets knocked off course when he goes on one date with Mary Malone, a girl he barely knows, who gets murdered later that night. The police chief tries to pin the murder on Ned. He fails, barely, due to the intervention of Ned's loving father. But Ned is so shaken by the experience that he becomes a hermit in the woods for the rest of his life. (My single favorite moment in the entire book is when hikers put up a sign near his cabin reading THIS WAY TO THE HAIRY MAN.) When Ned dies at the age of 66, he wakes up in his teenage body, the day before his fateful date with Mary Malone...
Ned tried repeatedly to save Mary's life, but is hampered by having no idea who really killed her, and by the police chief's consistent-across-lifetimes attempts pin the murder on him. After several lifetimes' failed attempts, he begins to wonder if it's possible to save her, and whether he should even keep trying.
This Middle Falls time travel book tied with the first one for my least favorite so far in the series; it's ambitious in some ways but suffers from a not-very-distinctive protagonist, not enough attention paid to side characters, a theme poorly integrated with the plot, and a climax in which the Universal Life Center angel Semolina (yes really) descends and just tells Ned what lesson he needs to learn in order to stop repeating his life. (Not the only book where that happens, either!)
It turns out that Ned IS supposed to stop trying to save Mary, and go live his own life. This is a pretty ballsy move on the part of the author, given how much of the book is taken up with Ned trying to save her. But it's not very satisfying as the message that not everything is fixable doesn't connect well with Ned's actual issues.
Ned isn't obsessed with fixing things in general. He only gets involved with Mary's murder because he he already lived through it, so he knows it's coming. He'd come across as a selfish sociopath if he didn't repeatedly try to save her under the circumstances. So why send him time-traveling through multiple lifetimes to teach him not to get over-involved in fixing things, when the only reason he got over-involved (with one specific incident!) was that he started time-traveling in the first place? That doesn't make sense to me.
And also, he only ever has one day to try to save Mary. Once he fails to do that, if the attempt didn't get him killed or thrown in jail, he just goes on with his life. If the key lesson was "don't get over-involved in other people's lives," he should have continued to do that. It makes no sense that his big character lesson is something that clearly has nothing to do with his actual character.
The other thing he's supposed to learn is to connect more with others. He has a very loving relationship with his father in every single lifetime, so the only thing that changes in his final one is that he gets married and has children. This falls flat as we learn almost nothing about his wife, who only appears in the last lifetime. It would have made more sense if his wife had been an actual character who'd been present all along. There's also a friend who he probably should stay in touch with, but he drops out of the picture in the final life too.
It turns out that Mary was killed by more-or-less accidentally getting shot by the angry pregnant wife of the police chief with whom she was having an affair, and he then dumped her body and tried to pin it on Ned. This really demanded some kind of justice or at least closure, but instead we never learn what happened to any of them.
On the plus side, this book did remind me of the things I usually enjoy about this series, and it put me in the mood for a good one. I might try the one with a con man protagonist as a big part of the issue with this one was that the hero was boring. I don't think I've ever encountered a boring con man character.
Ned tried repeatedly to save Mary's life, but is hampered by having no idea who really killed her, and by the police chief's consistent-across-lifetimes attempts pin the murder on him. After several lifetimes' failed attempts, he begins to wonder if it's possible to save her, and whether he should even keep trying.
This Middle Falls time travel book tied with the first one for my least favorite so far in the series; it's ambitious in some ways but suffers from a not-very-distinctive protagonist, not enough attention paid to side characters, a theme poorly integrated with the plot, and a climax in which the Universal Life Center angel Semolina (yes really) descends and just tells Ned what lesson he needs to learn in order to stop repeating his life. (Not the only book where that happens, either!)
It turns out that Ned IS supposed to stop trying to save Mary, and go live his own life. This is a pretty ballsy move on the part of the author, given how much of the book is taken up with Ned trying to save her. But it's not very satisfying as the message that not everything is fixable doesn't connect well with Ned's actual issues.
Ned isn't obsessed with fixing things in general. He only gets involved with Mary's murder because he he already lived through it, so he knows it's coming. He'd come across as a selfish sociopath if he didn't repeatedly try to save her under the circumstances. So why send him time-traveling through multiple lifetimes to teach him not to get over-involved in fixing things, when the only reason he got over-involved (with one specific incident!) was that he started time-traveling in the first place? That doesn't make sense to me.
And also, he only ever has one day to try to save Mary. Once he fails to do that, if the attempt didn't get him killed or thrown in jail, he just goes on with his life. If the key lesson was "don't get over-involved in other people's lives," he should have continued to do that. It makes no sense that his big character lesson is something that clearly has nothing to do with his actual character.
The other thing he's supposed to learn is to connect more with others. He has a very loving relationship with his father in every single lifetime, so the only thing that changes in his final one is that he gets married and has children. This falls flat as we learn almost nothing about his wife, who only appears in the last lifetime. It would have made more sense if his wife had been an actual character who'd been present all along. There's also a friend who he probably should stay in touch with, but he drops out of the picture in the final life too.
It turns out that Mary was killed by more-or-less accidentally getting shot by the angry pregnant wife of the police chief with whom she was having an affair, and he then dumped her body and tried to pin it on Ned. This really demanded some kind of justice or at least closure, but instead we never learn what happened to any of them.
On the plus side, this book did remind me of the things I usually enjoy about this series, and it put me in the mood for a good one. I might try the one with a con man protagonist as a big part of the issue with this one was that the hero was boring. I don't think I've ever encountered a boring con man character.
