I loved Niffenengger's technique of using time travel to weave intricacies into the plot, and to allow Henry to view the history of his relationship with Clare from the point of view of an adult. The premise was a great idea, and it was well executed.I did not love the characters. There seemed to be hints in the first half of the book that Henry was not the man he appeared to be, that he had a dark side to his personality. I was excited to find out how Clare -- whose biggest challenges in life so far were a bad high school experience and having to wait two whole years for the man of her dreams to reappear -- was going to handle this challenge. It turns out that Henry's secret life was that he dated an emotionally unstable woman before meeting Clare. *yawn*There were several implications to the time travelling that lead into moral grey areas. Henry "needs to" pick locks and steal clothing and food when he arrives at an asynchronous time, and he has been arrested several times. Even more intriguing is the time he spends with Clare when she is a child. Not only is it a little challenging for him to treat her appropriately, especially when she is a daring, hormone-fuelled teenager, but his presence in her life makes it impossible for her to have normal relationships with other boys, and when she learns that they are married in the future, their relationship is no longer really a choice for her (well, free will gets complicated in this book). These are interesting questions! And you would think that, since she is the main character according to the book's title, we would explore these questions. But no, instead we fall in love, civilize our man, and make babies like the good little girls that we are. UGH.At the end of the book, I couldn't help wondering what it would have been like if Niffenengger had switched Henry and Clare, so that she was the wildly out-of-control one and he was the steady, self-sacrificing, calming and domestic influence. In short, I wished this book had been about Clare, as the title promised, and not Henry.
