O-M-G, I am warning you now, if you have something that you absolutely need to do in about two or three hours, do NOT pick up this book, because you will have to gnaw off your own hand trying to put it down. And if you have the time to dedicate to it, for the love of the gods, get a box of kleenex, a bucket of bon-bons, and maybe a valium or two, because this story will tear your heart into a million little pieces and scatter them across the living room floor. I ADORE THIS BOOK! I know I say that a lot in these reviews, but there's just no other way to describe how much I cherish this chunk of literary ambrosia!

The Time Traveler's Wife is the story of Henry and Clair DeTamble: he is the time traveler and she is his wife. Through a mass swirl of time-traveling confusion, Clair meets Henry when she is a little girl and he is (uncontrollably) traveling to her house over and over again. I know, it sounds pervy, but it is really kind of adorable. Anyway, at some point, Henry stops traveling back to her from the future, but he swears that they will meet again when she's an adult. Well, wouldn't you know it, couple years down the road BAM! Clair meets Henry, whom, incidentally, has never laid eyes on her before because in the present he has not yet traveled to the past. I know, I know, you just reached for the tylenol, but trust me, Audrey Niffen-whatever explains it better than I ever could.

Anyway, after the best meet-cute that this reader has had the pleasure of absorbing in quite a qhile, Henry and Clair embark on the adventure that is their complicated lives together. Because the whole thing is that Henry cannot help time-traveling. It just happens to him: he can't control it and he can't turn it on and off. So one minute he's just kind of there, and the next minute he's just not, and nobody known when he's going to show back up again. So poor Clair just kind of has to sit around and do her own thing when Henry's not there and just take for granted that he's going to make it back alive. It's a very emotional situation to be in, not to mention one hell of a relationship tester.

Nevertheless, it is a romance in addition to being a drama, and no person with even half a heart can resist giving themselves over to Henry and Clair. They are just too adorable: and frankly I really wish that Clair was a real person, because I feel that we could hang out. I know a lot of people don't want to give this book the time of day because they say it's too complicated to understand, but really, I find that in most situations such as those, it's not that the story can't be understood, it's that the reader doesn't want to take the time to understand what they stopped believing in ages before: magic. Magic and love are what make this book fantastic, and it is sooooo worth the sit-down time if you just give it a chance.

Also, fun fact: somehow, someway, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston got the movie rights for this book, like, right after it came out, or sometime BEFORE it came out, or something like that. IDK: you'll have to look it up. HE ended up co- or executive producing the movie that came out last year, because I guess he won it in the divorce settlement. IDK. I just can't wrap my head around how he got a hold of it that quickly. On the other hand, it does now stand to reason that Brad Pitt and I have similar tastes in literature, and that particularly excites me, because I have been on Team Brangelina since Mr. and Mrs. Smith was still in post-production.

Okay, so I completely got off topic: anyway, the point is that The Time Traveler's Wife is literally one of the best books of this century, and certainly of the decade that we most recently put to rest. Read it: I know you'll love it.