Time spent in Sandypants's head is time well spent. Her unflinching honesty is refreshing. I'm glad she used her new super power well, despite refusing to provide the right numbers for her sister. ( )

DNF.

I thought I would give this book a try even though it's not one I would normally pick up. I couldn't make it more than about 1/3 through. I don't think I'm spoiling anything, because I didn't finish ...

I couldn't find anything to like about the main character. She frequently frustrated me with her choices. She clearly hated her job, but used her time travel ability to go back and fix something she did wrong. Why? She also used her power to "fix" her relationship problems. Again, why? He didn't want to be with her, but she was compelled to "make" him want to?

But I'm not a person to yuck somebody else's yum ... so this might be just the book for you. I just couldn't connect with the main character and couldn't force myself to go on. ( )

As I've stated before, I'm a sucker for a time-travel novel!
This is a romantic, funny, quirky one, with lots in interesting references to Greek mythology!
And potential multi-verses, but not too science-y.

Cassandra in Cassandra in Reverse reminds me a lot of Eleanor in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine with her social awkwardness. You just cheer her on and want her to succeed.

There are themes in here dealing with past trauma surrounding Cassandra's parents untimely death 10 year prior which I found to be just heartbreaking when everything comes to light. ( )

The Cassandra Complex left me with mixed feelings. In some ways, it’s brilliant. In others, it fell flat. The book felt too long in places and the references to Greek mythology were too frequent for me as I have no interest in the subject. However, if you’re a fan you might enjoy them more.

Cassandra is a neurodivergent main character who knows what works and doesn’t work for you. She prefers routine (coloured jumpsuits for each day of the week, banana muffins) and doesn’t like change. But then she has the day from hell, where her boyfriend breaks up with her, she gets fired and the local café has no banana muffins. She can’t help but meltdown, but then she finds out that she can travel back in time. Can she fix her relationship, work and home life?

The reason for Cassie being able to travel through time and the limitations on it (she can only go back several months) are never fully explained. But if something isn’t working, she can just close her eyes and erase it to start over. It’s a cool idea, but it does get monotonous when Cassie edits and repeats scenes multiple times, such as meeting her boyfriend and various conversations with her boss and clients. Most of Cassie’s motivation is on how to ensure that her boyfriend Will doesn’t break up with her. Cassie is an intriguing character as she sees feelings in colours and has no filter when it comes to workplace conversations, but she just felt flat at times. It’s clear to the reader than she’s in situations that don’t suit her strengths but Cassandra seems to be oblivious to it. Likewise, it was clear that Cassie was autistic but next to no one seemed to realise it, including herself. I found that quite difficult to grasp as Cassie makes no apology for who she is and surely someone would have mentioned something along the way? She’s never a dull character but I didn’t really feel anything about her character because every time something was difficult, she just rewound time and started again.

Fortunately, the plot moves away from Cassie trying to get Will back (who seems to be a nice character, but it’s a little odd that Cassie is clinging so hard to a relationship of a few months) and into her family dynamics. This was more interesting and gave some more background on Cassie rather than just the time period that she’s stuck in. It does come with some awkward moments and makes the ending seem even more odd – just as Cassie seems to be making peace with what happened, making friends and resolving past tensions, she starts again…why? Her motivation wasn’t clear and it was a frustrating way to end in my opinion.

I’m sure there are more parallels to the Greek gods and Cassie’s story than I realised but I got sick of the references and just skimmed over them. The novel felt too long in places (I agree Cassie – time travel is exhausting) and repetitive in others. For me, this novel promised a lot but didn’t work for me. I wanted more on the how and why of time travel and why Cassie chose to go round again after things were looking up.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )

An interesting take on the time travel/live your life again trope, with Cassandra discovering the ability to rewind parts of her life to do again. Cassandra is a great character, and I immediately sympathized with her and rooted for her. But, I had a couple of issues with this book:

1) The title is misleading. Cassandra is not actually living her life in reverse. Rather, she has the ability to turn back time and relive certain parts of her life. Cassandra Rewinds might have been a better choice.
2) Are we seriously expected to believe that no-one in Cassandra's life understood that she's on the autism spectrum? It's books like this that make me wish I were an editor. If I'd seen the manuscript, I would have suggested some seriously reworking of this point. To be clear, I'm not objecting to Cassandra being on the autism spectrum, but rather that a major piece of the plot seems to hinge on neither she nor anyone in her life recognizing it. I would have advised making it part of the plot from the beginning, rather than a mystery that has to be solved for Cassandra's life to make sense. ( )