The last week has been a little mad on the home front, lots of work and lots of animals! Finding time for reading was proving a little difficult, but I eventually cleared my schedule and finished my first book of 2019. I have been doing a buddy read of Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor with my friend Jonny over @jonnyslibrary. We have both now finished the book and come to terms with our feelings so it’s time for a review.
It’s been a long while since I did a proper book review so sit back and relax, this could be a long one! I sense a rant coming on :-)
Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor
This book follows our main character Madeleine Maxwell as she embarks on a new line of work in the elusive St Mary’s history department. The historians of St Mary’s are no ordinary scholars, they travel back in time to document events as they really happened. The main rule is not to change anything, but of course that is easier said than done. One misadventure leads to another which leads to another which leads to events that could alter the very fabric of the future world!
2.5 stars
Positives - engaging plot lines, easy to get into, interesting world building
Negatives - very triggering, unbelievable character relationships, very rushed
*Spoilers*
Aaaah this book! I seriously struggled to rate this book, it started as a 4 star then dropped to a 2 and just about redeemed itself to a 2.5 by the end. Where to start?
The setting was lovely old academic England with all the quirks of mad professors. I loved the first 100 pages when Max is doing her training. It had just the right amount of humour and brutality to really invest me in the story. However, when Max goes back to the Cretaceous period (think dinosaurs) it all went south. Firstly Sussman’s character went from being your typical arrogant man to downright awful in 2 seconds flat. He tries to rape her and then tries to murder her and you later find out he planned to kill her all along! This is a man who worked and laughed with her for 5 years! It all felt a bit jarring, but it’s not the worst.
Disaster strikes when a mission goes wrong and several members, including her lover Chief Farrell are lost in dinoland. All of a sudden she’s out of a job and thinks her lover is dead. A few months later she finds herself in pain so off she heads to the clinic and oh wait she’s having a miscarriage. Very rushed right?
The miscarriage part of the novel did nothing to advance the story or the characters and the way it was handled was so casual and off-hand that it really disturbed me. This is a subject that should be handled with care and not just thrown in as a random plot twist. If that wasn’t bad enough, when Chief Farrell finds out she was pregnant and lost the baby he instantly accuses her of cheating and trying to pass the baby off as his. Later on he apologises and she shockingly takes him back! No self-respecting woman would tolerate that kind of behaviour. She had just risked life and limb heading back in time to save him, why would she do that if she never loved him and was cheating on him?
The plot felt jarring and a lot of it felt cobbled together with no real structure. Suddenly characters carry out an action or say things that are completely out of keeping with their behaviour until that point! Personally, I found this book a bit triggering and nearly put it down. I loved the idea of it and I’m hoping subsequent books are better, but for now I’m not sure I’ll continue the series. It's always an alarm bell when the most believable part of a time travel novel is the time travel itself.
Have you read this book? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below if you’ve read any disappointing books lately :-)
xoxo
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