The Once and Future Me
Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for the digital review copy in advance. This one hits shelves on August 19th.
This was twisty and genre-bending and I had so much fun with it.
We open with a woman awakening in a bus. She’s disoriented. She doesn’t know who she is, where she is, or when she is. Someone on the bus steals her purse and when they reach their destination, our unnamed woman is escorted off and told she’s being admitted to a Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital. The year is 1954. The staff is calling her Dorothy Frasier, but that doesn’t feel right (could Dorothy be the thief from the bus?). She notices padlocks and knows whether they’re easy or difficult to pick. She thinks about weapons and escape and confidently feels she could achieve these goals. Why, though? Isn’t she a typical 50s housewife? A voice inside keeps telling her she’s from the future and on a mission.
This held my attention well enough to start, but by the final 20% I was on the edge of my seat. The plot thickened. The twists surprised me and I predicted less than is typical for me when reading this genre. That’s a win in my opinion.
Here’s what I loved:
🪞Time travel
🪞 A future (2035) full of global crisis, religious fanaticism, and some interesting worldbuilding
🪞 The way this one dug into the culture of the 1950s—housewives, expectations, feminism, asylums, etc.
I read most of this on the couch while my husband watched the first season of Mad Men next to me. The juxtaposition felt timely. Reading about “Dorothy Frasier’s” electroconvulsive therapy to form her into a more submissive woman with Betty Draper in the background was so on the nose.
“Freedom depends on my cooperation.”
I can see readers being disappointed by an ambiguous ending, but I appreciated it. There were some loose ends and unanswered questions, maybe even some set up for a possible second book. Would I take a followup novel? Absolutely. Do I need one? No. I’m okay with the lack of resolve. It feels a little bit like ending a song on a minor chord in a satisfying way.
Overall, I really liked this and thought it was a great debut.
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There are definitely some sensitive moments in this one including forced institutionalization and attempted sexual assault. None of it was extremely explicit, but it’s enough to warn you.
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