The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North

This book is time travel, sort of, except it’s the Groundhog Day type where you don’t get a choice in how it’s done – you just rewind and get your life all over again, which is what happens to narrator Harry August. After he dies, he is reborn exactly where and when he was the first time, except this time he has all the memories of his previous life and is trapped in an infant body. (Yes, this happens fifteen times in the course of the book. Each time, North elides the weird part of having to get diaper trained and learn to walk while fully conscious and in possession of an adult mind, by simply skipping over it to when Harry is six and theoretically capable of asserting agency.) The first half of the book is Harry coming to terms with this strange existence, as well as meeting others who go through something similar; he learns that his fellow travelers – they call themselves kalachakras – have reached a sort of gentlemen’s agreement not to use their foreknowledge to greatly impact history, since that sort of thing can have terrible impacts down the timeline. Then Harry starts getting mysterious warnings passed down from the future, and begins to realize that a disaster is looming that only he can prevent. I enjoyed the ride, and North carried the story along splendidly. Unfortunately, this was the sort of book that’s super fun to read but doesn’t bear up well when you start thinking about the details and how it’s all supposed to work together.

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