"How to Stop Time" by Matt Haig

Kathy and I were in Books-a-Million, looking through the Fiction section. She asked me to show her the book I was holding; I had already picked this one out and I held it up to her, feeling pretty pleased with myself. 'Oh yeah, I looked at that,' she said. 'But you didn't want to read it?' I asked. 'I read a couple of sentences at random and decided the writing wasn't good enough,' she explained. I frowned. I, too, had read a couple of sentences at random (or maybe it was the book's opening sentences?) and decided the writing seemed fine. I could have taken the warning and read a few more sentences, but I was feeling stubborn: I liked the idea of the plot - man ages at one-fifteenth the speed of everyone else, meaning that he could live for nearly 1,000 years - and I hadn't seen much else in the store that interested me, so I bought the book.

I should have listened to Kathy.

I am particularly drawn to mostly realistic novels that mess with time or natural laws or the realms of possibility in some way. 'Life After Life' by Kate Atkinson is maybe the best example of this, or 'The Time Traveller's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger. But this novel, sadly, was not in that class. In fact, it was pretty bad - the characters glib, the plot predictable, the writing all cute and contrived - and I had to force myself to keep reading it every night. Maybe it will spark into life, I kept hoping. Instead of which, the narrator met Shakespeare. Ten pages of eye-rolling and excruciating dialogue later, I gave up.

I tend to think you shouldn't review books if you haven't finished reading them, but I am making an exception for this one. Don't make the same mistake I did. Save yourself $25 and numerous wasted hours. It has a nice cover and a cool premise, but it's crap. Put it back on the shelf and walk away.