The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

Where does The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far? Excellent.

There were a lot of cool new ideas in here about the nature of time, memory, destiny, self-determination, and the things that make humans themselves. I also enjoyed the general sci-fi, time travel premise because I can't really say that I've seen this particular concept before. I enjoyed that the author was brave enough to make the characters the people they would logically have been, given the situation they were placed in. Like, if the characters in The Girl on the Train or Skippy Dies effed you up, this isn't the book for you. I mean, prrrroooobably don't read this book if you're in a very fragile emotional/mental health state. If death means nothing to you why would you care if you committed suicide by rat poison? If you live the same life over and over for hundreds of years, how could the 'linears' (normal people) become anything other than paper dolls for you to play with? Once I situated the characters in their culture rather than my culture I was definitely able to understand their motivations and empathize with them. While I'm glad I was pre-warned that there was a lot of gruesome violence in the book (there is) and that the characters are generally callous and frequently cruel people (they are), these aspects made sense for the premise of the book. It should have been a little higher up on my wishlist. I put this book low on my wishlist because it sounded interesting but the words 'tough to read' and 'sociopath' and 'couldn't like the characters' kept popping up in the reviews. As you are, I'm a person who reads the reviews to see if I should invest in a book.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North