Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

**copied from my goodreads review I was so excited about the premise of this book and so so disappointed in the delivery of a book that I thought would be a wonderful midpoint of my favorite genre - time travel and dystopian adventure. The only way that this book makes the vaguest of sense is if it is a satire of dystopian fiction, written as insultingly terrible as a statement on her opinion of the genre... which I am in no way convinced that it is, given the summary, all the reviews, and the way it is written. The main character is a 17 year old girl who starts as meek and passive and is exiled when she 'accidentally' gives a practice speech for the valedictorian achievement, which she receives also on accident, because it is considered illegal and she is exiled to the past. From there she makes not one single decision in the entire book, everything just happens to her as as she is treated as a set piece. The only plot point in the whole book is that she is stalker level obsessed with a comic-book style creep and thinks about him constantly. She follows him, does his laundry and dishes, and is set dressing for his more interesting backstory.... is this a commentary on how women are often treated in science-fiction? maybe, maybe not, but either way you still have to read hours of a woman being used as an object with no autonomy, back story, thought, redeeming characteristics, or development of any kind.... The actual style is almost journalistic - it is just a list of what happens, there are very few 'scenes' where anything happens, anyone interacts or says anything or anyone makes any decisions whatsoever. A vast majority of the book is either the main character thinking to herself about how obsessed she is with this man she has barely met, explanations of the alphabet soup of the 'future' government, and in depth descriptions of the psychological principals which were outdated, disgusting, and never disputed or discussed in any meaningful way - for example the bigwig professor is setting up a center for electroshock therapy for gay people, which nobody (future travelers included) seems to think is wrong, or in any way worth discussing, it is just mentioned about 10 times and left there among the other over discussed psychological junk. The romance in the book is perhaps the worst part, the main character is obsessed with an assistant professor she barely knows, she follows him around and about half the text is her thinking about how much she 'loves him' and decides that the best way to get his attention is to just do whatever he says and be his house keeper to make him 'need' her. Eventually he convinces her to try and escape their imprisonment, which she has no opinion or thoughts on, she just goes along because she wants him to love her. In the end the only thing she ever does is fall in love fast, make herself subservient and in no way act as an active participant in her life. Once again this could be a satire of how fast characters often fall in love in the genre..... but I'm not convinced that this is the case, and either way it is painful and insulting to read I wish I could get a refund on the time and money I spent on this book