Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I found the relationship between Henry and young Clare creepily close to pedophilia. He appears naked to her, beginning when she is six years old and continuing through her childhood and adolescence. This is their little secret and it warps Clare's childhood and teenage relationships. She has no interest in boyfriends and can't be honest with other girls due to her secret. Henry lusts for her long before they have sex on her eighteenth birthday (when he is forty-one). Henry's relationship with the grownup Clare reads like a bad romance novel. Henry is portrayed as a dangerous. He enjoys beating up men and treats women callously. Clare is the sweet virgin who wins his heart. The couple has insatiable and fabulous sex that, unfortunately for the reader, comes across as more crude than loving or exciting. Henry as bad boy didn't ring true to me. The role seems imposed on him to fit the romance novel formula. Most of the time he seems the passive librarian. I found him more sympathetic than Clare, who never grows beyond self-absorption. A typical Clare act is to have sex with her best friend's husband without giving the friend's feelings a single thought. Clare's art career feels tacked on. She doesn't struggle with her art or use it to rise above Henry's absences. Her role in life is to wait for him. Is this love or sick dependency? Clare is the damaged person you would expect the product of pedophilia to be. The author got it right. The problem is, she didn't understand her own material and the result is a dishonest book that presents unhealthy love as beautiful and true. I liked the time travel idea and the back and forth narrative, but couldn't get past the sappy romance and whiff of pedophilia.