Book Review – Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen

This was… so boring. And here’s the thing about this – the agent who took on and sold this book is one of my favorite literary people. He’s also an author along with being an agent and I’ve followed him and interacted with him on Twitter for years. So there’s got to be something here that I just didn’t click with, but this book was not for me.

In Here and Now and Then, Kin Stewart is a family man living in the present day. But he has these headaches and these weird symptoms that make him pass out sometimes. His wife and daughter are worried, and they finally make him seek help. But that’s the thing here – he’s not sick. He’s just suffering from not being able to remember his actual life… in the future.

Kin is an agent with the ability to time travel, but he got stuck in 1996 and ended up building a life there. He met his wife, got married, and they had a daughter together. But doing that upset the continuum, and now he has to return to his actual life and leave them behind with no explanation – because they don’t know who he was in the first place.

I DNFed at 25%.

Why I DNFed

It’s literally as simple as I was dying of boredom. This sounds super interesting, right? Time travel! Secret life in a different time period! Getting stuck in the past! Except somehow, I’ve never been so bored in my life. It was so mundane. There was a lot about the science of the time travel that was happening and not a whole lot of plot or adventure. It reminded me of how I felt when I was trying to read Lord of the Rings. I KNEW there was a grand adventure in those pages because I’d seen the movies and people had told me how good the books were. But all I could come up with was they did a shit ton of walking. So I know there’s something here. It’s just not for me.

Would I Pick This Up Again?

No. I wouldn’t. However, if they made it into a movie, I’d watch it. I feel like something cool is coming, plot-wise, but I don’t have the patience for it. Too many trees, not enough forest.

Has anyone else read this and loved it? Can you fill me in on what you loved? Maybe that would make me pick it up again.

Happy reading, everyone!