This is a science fiction mystery about four women who invented time travel in the 1960s.

There are some quite original ideas in this book and it has a decent mystery story line but I found the writing to be rather flat a very basic in its descriptiveness at times. Not as good as I had hoped but generally an okay read.

This book sounded like an interesting story, and while it is outside my normal genres, the cover and blurb grabbed me straight away. The story overall was solid and interesting concept, and there were a number of unique time travel ideas that the author was able to weave in, however he writing was fairly average, and the level of description was lacking. On a number of occasions the author just told us straight out what the character was thinking and feeling, instead of using these as opportunities to develop the characters. Following the different people and years was difficult, despite each change being titled with the year and main character, and some of the underdeveloped sub-characters were quite forgettable, leaving me at times wondering who it was I was reading about. Mascarenhas touches on a number of social issues, some in ways that made me stop and think, others that made me cringe with how tacked on they felt.

This is the debut novel from Kate Mascarenhas who is a part-Irish, part-Seychellois midlander. Since 2017, Kate has been a chartered psychologist. Before that she worked as a copywriter, a dolls' house maker, and a bookbinder. She lives with her husband in a small terraced house which she is slowly filling with Sindy dolls. This is her first novel.

They say write what you know so some characters are Irish and some are Seychellois. There is a psychologist in the story and many many of the same people but in duplicate as created during time travel. One Goodreads review complained bitterly that Mascarenhas had gone against well-known time-travel narratives as established in Doctor Who and marked the book lower than low. I think she has used an ingenious device to deal with it and one probably much closer to what would ever happen in reality.

Four women scientists discover time travel and are all set to show the world this new invention when one of the pioneers has a breakdown. Years later only three pioneers are famous but a murder brings up the past.

This is a smart book with a well-thought out background but more importantly, the plot and characters are believable and likeable. I stayed up all night to read it and the world the author created felt just right. It was only after I finished that I realised it was mainly a female based cast and this tickled me. Men were assuredly not missed.

Some excellent writing.

The Psychology of Time Travel is published 9 August 2018.

Reconozco que cuando leo que una novela tiene como temática los viajes en el tiempo algo se activa en mi cerebro. Y es que la práctica totalidad de las novelas que he leído de este subgénero de la ciencia ficción han resultado para mí todo un gustazo, como Vuelta a empezar de Ken Grimwood o Las primeras quince vidas de Harry August de Claire North, esta última reseñada en este mismo blog.

Es así como llegué a The psychology of time travel. Una materia que me interesa con un título que indica que este novela pueda centrarse en algo más que el mero viaje en el tiempo y sus consecuencias. Por su parte, y únicamente atendiendo a lo que he podido encontrar por la red, la joven británica Kate Mascarenhas se estrena en la publicación literaria con esta obra que, además, sale a la luz bajo un sello de notable tamaño para un primer lanzamiento.

El libro cuenta con varias protagonistas y líneas temporales que se van intercalando unas con otras con la intención de que la lectura no se haga pesada en ningún momento. Con un elenco de personajes netamente femenino en el que apenas veremos algún varón indirectamente mencionado, la historia comienza en el momento en que cuatro jóvenes científicas de 1967 consiguen encontrar la manera de viajar en el tiempo. Lo hacen con la ayuda de animales hasta que deciden probar usándose a sí mismas como cobayas para el test. A consecuencia de este logro les llega la fama hasta que, durante una entrevista, una de ellas empieza a reaccionar de manera extraña, aparentemente afectada mentalmente por los viajes temporales.

Este será el detonante de prácticamente todos los acontecimientos, viéndose especialmente afectados aquellos que tienen lugar en 2017 y 2018, donde veremos como las mismas científicas han seguidos sus caminos, algunas aun involucradas en el negocio del viaje en el tiempo. En estos años los viajes son algo mucho más común, asentado y comprendido que cinco décadas antes y son frecuentemente utilizados para resolver enigmas o crímenes como el que ocupara buena parte de la segunda mitad de la novela. Es en 2018 cuando aparece un cadáver en una sala cerrada por dentro. Un misterio ampliamente tratado en las novelas de misterio pero que cobra una nueva dimensión cuando los viajes en el tiempo son tan habituales como puede serlo coger un tren para ir a trabajar.

The psychology of time travel tiene varios puntos a favor y en contra. En la balanza de lo positivo diré que la novela se lee en un suspiro, tiene algunas aportaciones que me han parecido interesantes para las novelas de viajes en el tiempo (o eso me ha parecido con mi bagaje previo) y es lo suficientemente ligera como para que pueda llegar a un público ciertamente amplio. No puedo dejar de mencionar también algunas hilarantes escenas donde veremos a la misma persona repetida varias veces dado que cada uno proviene de diferentes líneas temporales y en los que la autora se manera con solvencia a la hora de describir.



En lo negativo, además de un final que no me convenció, tengo varios problemas con esta novela. Por un lado no he tenido en ningún momento la sensación de que el aspecto psicológico que se menciona en el título de la novela sea algo relevante en la obra más allá de su irrupción inicial y de la escisión que provoca entre las científicas en las primeras páginas. Por otro, en el aspecto más puro de los viajes en el tiempo, la novela no entra en ningún caso en complicaciones a la hora de explicar paradojas o ciertas leyes o restricciones propias del viaje en el tiempo más allá de las más evidentes. Sencillamente, no entra a ello ni parece que en ningún momento tuviera intención de ello. Esto hace que The Psychology of Time Travel termine por ser una novela más orienta al público generalista donde el thriller y las relaciones entre unos personajes lineales cobren todo el protagonismo.

Con todo lo dicho recomendar la novela puede ser un riesgo. Depende ampliamente del lector, las expectativas y la experiencia previa personal de cada persona. Para lectores avanzados en la materia o con interés en profundizar, creo que es más probable que acabéis frustrados en ciertos momentos que disfrutando la obra. Si por el contrario buscas una novela ligera, con relativa emoción (se intuye a leguas la resolución del misterio que enlaza todas las líneas temporales) y que te permita pasar paginas rápidamente, esta puede ser una buena opción.

I do enjoy a time travel story, not that I’ve read many, but the idea of it really does intrigue me. This was a book that I really didn’t want to stop reading. I had things I needed to do but I kept putting them off to find out what was going to happen next. I loved the whole idea that time travel had become normal, well for a special government department it had, but it was something that truly did exist outside of films, TV and sci-fi books.

Ruby, Barbara, Grace and Odette were wonderful characters, with great storylines and I loved following their stories through time.

The mystery side of this story was really good it kept me guessing, although I had a inkling at what was going on. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the dates, but I was enjoying the story too much to concentrate on them and work out the big reveal.

I won’t say any more because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of it. I definitely recommend it if you like mysteries full of diverse characters.

I received a free ecopy of this book in return for an honest review. Many thanks to @netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity.

I love a good time travel story. Catapult someone through time, give them a mission. Try to guess whether they can change the future by changing the past. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t. This book isn’t like that at all.

This book is about different characters, at different times, how their lives overlap, and what time travel does to them and the people they love. More than that, though, it sets out to explore the sociology and, yes, the psychology of time travel. It dips into the slang, the economy, the justice system, the sexual habits, presenting, in some cases, concepts I could have lived without knowing.

The story begins in 1968 with the discovery of time travel by four female scientists. It is worth saying at this point that there are few male characters in the book and female characters dominate throughout. The youngest time travel pioneer, Barbara, is negatively affected by time travel jet lag which triggers manic depression in her and, after a very public breakdown, she is ejected from the experiments. In 2017 Barbara and her granddaughter, Ruby, are secretly given evidence of a death the following year linked to what is now a full blown time travel enterprise called The Conclave. The Conclave now employs many people from various time zones, from 1968 into the far future. In 2018, Odette finds a body and sets out to discover who, how and why the person died.

This novel is like plate of spaghetti, there are so many different strands that you think the narration is pulling on one piece only to find something entirely different has been revealed. I couldn’t actually tell you definitively which character was intended to be the main one. Though Ruby and Odette share the same time zone and much of the limelight, their paths rarely cross, and each is as interesting as the other. Other characters are dropped into the story that have an equal draw on your attention. One thing that is constant here, though, is the mystery of the body. Little clues dropped along the way keep the reader guessing. Small pieces of the puzzle are breadcrumbed throughout to the reader hungry for more.

The depth to which the author explored the side issues of time travel, though, is impressive. Is it considered cheating if you are in a time in which your partner has already died or not yet been born? How do you pay time travellers in a meaningful way? Given that laws change, what laws should time travellers obey? What happens when you meet yourself? What do time travellers call non-time travellers? Many other questions like these have clearly been given thorough consideration.

By the end Of the book, I realised that though I did, in fact, miss the traditional time travel novel following one person or one group through the experience of time travel. However, I genuinely felt that it was worth it to see a new perspective on an old genre. This book gave me so much food for thought. Well worth a read.

I loved the sampler and I loved the entire book. I'm a fan of Doctor Who and Outlander and I'm fascinated by books that involves time travel.
I hope this one is the first one in a series because there's a lot of world building and it would nice to read more about the characters and what will happen after the last page.
I loved the entire female cast of characters, with their emotional baggage and their desire to understand, evolve and change.
It's well written, the characters are well developed and the villain is a serious one.
The mystery was very good, there's just one thing that let me wonder, but there were no plot hole.
Even though it's a bit confusing and slot at time I was hooked and couldn't put it down.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to Head of Zeus and Netgalley for this ARC

It took me a while to get into this book, but when I did, I really enjoyed it. There are so many characters and they are all somehow connected. It's amazing and hard at the same time. I had sometimes issues remembering the names and who they were and what their function was, but the more I read, the easier it got.

This is a story about women and that is what really stood out. All these talented women who work relentlessly  towards their goals and fight for what they believe in. All these characters felt real and fleshed out to me, even though there were so many. Of course, some got more attention, but in the end I knew them all to a certain extent.

The story itself should have felt all over the place. It jumps from time to time and character to character, but I still always felt consistent. Everything made sense where it was. It felt like a mosaic, loads of different parts, that make sense when put together but maybe not in their own.

I really loved the mystery part of the story. It was carried by the great characters, but I was really interested to see it unfold and find out all the little pieces that led to the outcome I was shown so early on.

What I also really enjoyed was the casual diversity this book had. So many main characters were of colour and there was a truly amazing romantic relationship between two women. This was all handled so well and with regard to issues that might arise. It felt real and honest and I loved that about it.

The time travel aspect of the story was also handled well. It's a very complicated and often used trope, but this novel shed a completely new light on it and I loved it. Seeing a whole organisation with rules and basically it's on society arise from it was something I hadn't seen before. I still think that it's always a difficult couple, but this book truly dealt with how it might influence the human mind and I loved that.

Overall I think this was a truly amazing debut novel and I can't wait to see what the author will come up with next.

Time travel stories can very quickly and easily go awry and become confusing to the reader. I found that the majority of this book avoided that issue and kept me interested and on my toes.
This novel explored some interesting themes and had a very engaging plot, my only issue is that there were slightly too many characters and whilst i am all in favour of strong female leads i found myself getting a bit mixed up with some of the characters.
The writing style was elegant and a joy to read so i cannot wait to see more from Kate Mascarenhas.

I was originally granted a sampler of this book via NetGalley so was excited to see how it would all unfold in the complete novel.

When I first started this, I was excited by the number of female characters (this book would meet the Bechdel test!) and at the same time, found they overlapped and I couldn't keep them straight. That was only at the very outset and then all became clear...

I love that this is a complex mystery. It could never be straightforward with the physics of time travel entwined with a murder, and the logic also held throughout, whilst moving through the eras.

Bee's story put me in mind of Delia Derbyshire - a female pioneer from the 1960s who worked on the Dr Who theme and whose story touches on similar issues regarding mental health issues arising either as a result of overwork, or work used as a "management tool" for a pre-existing condition.

There are two reasons I could not give this book 5 stars. The first is that there is a court case within the novel that felt out-of-place, in that it felt like a nonsense case straight out of Alice in Wonderland - the case having nothing whatsoever to do with the alleged crime. Next, and more importantly, the final 10% of the novel is a psychometric test, as given to time travellers. I had thought there were still a few things to wrap up and had not anticipated that the REAL end of the book was going to come 90% of the way through. Had the ending been different, it would have been 4 stars from me.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Head of Zeus and the author for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book has a lot! Female leads, murder mystery, time travel and sciencey details, romance, affairs, family drama, and for me personally it was perhaps a little overly complicated for such a small book.
That said the foundations are good, it’s orginal, well thought out, well written and if you are a fan of things recently like ‘Elizabeth Is Missing’ and ‘The Keeper Of Lost Things’ I think this one is worth your time too.

This is Feminist Fiction
I struggle a lot with feminist fiction because most of it tries too hard and it’s always so on the nose about it. This one is just feminist because it is. This focuses solely on female characters and I think there’s barely any male characters in the whole book. Moreover, they are all really smart and capable women and the book definitely passes the Bechdel test. Moreover, one of the main characters is a lesbian and there are multiple POC characters in this. It’s GREAT.

An Intriguing Concept
The premise of this is really amazing. Time travel is always fun and exciting and in this novel it really worked. I really loved how time travel was used to both design the murder mystery aspect of the story, but also to show how time travel affects people and their mental health and how it changes your outlook on life. While the concept of time travel isn’t developed with as much detail I would love, its potential is fully used and I really liked that.

The Mystery
The murder mystery part of this is really interesting. It does work and there’s a lot of clues throughout. You can guess by the end who is the murderer and who is the victim and I tend to like that. It isn’t predictable, it’s just well-written, and it makes sense, which makes it possible to guess. Plus, this mystery is unlike any other I read because it relies heavily on time travel, so there’s a whole other aspect to it.

A blend of genres
This book manages to be a cozy murder mystery, a thriller, a SciFi time travel book, an exploration of mental health and cult-like behavior and I really loved how the author managed to blend these things together and make them work seamlessly. Moreover, this is a very human story which I always love and appreciate.

The Psychology of Time Travel
I did not expect this to actually have so much focus on psychology and mental health but I did and I really appreciated that. There’s talk of anxiety, OCD, eating disorders and they’re all handled really well. Moreover, this tackles the subjects of mental health stigma and explores all of this in a time-traveling context. There’s also talk about mortality and how it means nothing when you can time travel which was such an interesting thing to discuss and I loved it.

Also side note: time travel in here wasn’t what you expect. There’s no changing of the future nor the past and I really liked a different approach to it.

To Sum Up
I highly recommend you pick this one up. A female-centered mystery with time travel that’s really clever and engaging – you really can’t go wrong with that.

A fascinating premise with women scientists as leading characters. I was immediately drawn into this intriguing debut novel. That it was also a mystery scored extra points and that cover was phenomenal.

I did find the hopping about in time a bit confusing and was glad I could use the search function on my Kindle when I needed to check back. Having an ARC not certain if a character list was included but rather wish I had kept notes or flow chart to keep track. The Appendix was a bit odd though did have some amusing questions and responses.

I feel it is a novel I might want to reread and may suggest it to my reading group as we have had a few novels with time travel themes and this one raises questions about paradoxes. That the text refers to Doctor Who (as popular culture not the actual Doctor popping in for a cameo) made me smile.

The sensitive approach to mental illness was greatly appreciated. I did rather wish for more and would be delighted to hear what her next project will be. Well done Head of Zeus for supporting this new voice in fiction. Hoping to see it on Women’s Prize for Fiction list for next year.

What drew me to this book was the unusual story. Margaret, Grace, Estelle and Barbara were pioneers who in 1969 invented time travel. All 4 were as close as sisters until Barbara suffered a psychotic episode live on TV. Shunned by the rest, she lived a quiet life in the countryside. The rest took forward their idea and created the Conclave, an institution who monopolised the time travel industry.
In February 2018, Odette, a young graduate, finds a body, wanting closure, she decided to do her own investigations.
At the start of this book I thought I would get confused with the story as it was changing character and time. However, after the 1st couple of chapters, I soon got into the swing of it. Switching times showed just how planned the story was. Even though it was in different time periods, the story flowed smoothly. Each character was described in detail and unique in their own way. Every characters acted differently in the various timelines and it showed just how much an impact the time travel had on people. As the story progressed, characters like Ruby and Odette developed, and as you followed them on their journeys of discovery, you see them grow into strong confident women. Some of my favourite scenes were when Grace met her younger or older self and threw the paradox theories out the window
The science of time travel did not distract from the story and some of the minute details added to the story. One such touch was when Ruby bought a book about time travellers’ slang which all though something small, helped me understand the story further on. The story covered a whole range of emotions, such as love, death, revenge and you are taken on a roller-coaster of a ride.
This story is beautifully written and it was a refreshing change to read a story which is dominated by women. The mystery element ran throughout and for me I thoroughly enjoyed the explanation on how the murder was done.
This is the 1st book I have read by this author and it will not be the last. I hope there will be more stories of these brave women to come.

A fab read full of science, psychology, mystery and of course, time travel. Filled with a fab cast of primarily female characters, all with different personalities and strengths. A fast paced and edge-of-your-seat kinda read.

Kate Mascarenhas's exhilarating debut, The Psychology of Time Travel, manages the difficult trick of making its time travel completely consistent and coherent. It's rare to come across a time travel novel that handles its chronological jumps so carefully and yet is so relatively simple to follow chapter-by-chapter (while I loved the machinations of Michael Swanwick's Bones of the Earth, at a certain point I just had to admit I couldn't follow the plot), especially one aimed, as this is, at a more mainstream audience. Four female pioneers - Grace, Estelle, Barbara and Margaret - invent time travel in 1967. After the first set of experimental trips, Barbara has a mental breakdown, is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and banned from the project. Meanwhile, in 2017, Barbara's granddaughter Ruby receives a newspaper clipping about the death of an elderly woman, while in 2018, Odette, a museum cleaner, discovers the woman's unidentified body.

As the title suggests, much of the originality of this novel lies in Mascarenhas's take on what time travel could do to the way people think. In this world, time travel is confined to the select few who work for the 'Conclave', and not only formal psychological tests, but informal and vicious hazings, are required to gain admittance to the programme. Once a candidate is selected to become a time traveller, their life takes on a very different shape. Their 'green' or younger selves and 'silver' or older selves constantly criss-cross through their timeline, and, Mascarenhas suggests, death ceases to have much meaning for them as they are able to visit those who have died whenever they want to. As one time traveller beautifully puts it near the end of the novel: 'Whenever I visit my father, the trees in his garden are young again, and so is he. I will never take that for granted.' On the other hand, this corporate culture can lead to callousness and brutality towards ordinary people, or 'emus', those who have to trek through time in a straight line. Mascarenhas is also interested in how mental illness manifests itself in this discontinuous world, with one minor character suffering from an eating disorder where she can only bring herself to eat by travelling back to the exact time of her birth.

The Psychology of Time Travel is consistently engaging, packed with interesting, thought-provoking ideas about time, mental health and love. However, I found that the novel was more intellectually absorbing than emotionally moving, despite the poignancy of the subject-matter. Mascarenhas wants to fit so much in that we constantly jump from character to character; her cast doesn't seem shallow at all, but we just don't have enough time to spend with the main protagonists to get to know them in the way we might like. I was never confused by the story, despite the multiple, intersecting plot lines, which speaks to Mascarenhas's skill as a writer, but it all seemed to happen too fast. I wanted to know more about life in the laboratory with the early pioneers, about Margaret's hold over the Conclave, more about Grace and the significant romantic relationship that she develops with another female character, more about Estelle full stop. Indeed, I'd love to read a related novel set in this world. Whether or not that's something Mascarenhas wants to write, I'll definitely be reading her next book.

I love a good mystery! Add time travel into the mix and I am hooked! I felt compelled to keep reading about these strong female characters well past my usual bedtime. Despite the twists and turns, full cast of characters and tromping through time, I was able to keep up with each remarkable storyline as it unfolded. Easily the most consuming and imaginative book I’ve read this year.

This book is something rarely seen in the literary world, or at least it is to me. It's a sci-fi book aimed at women. This is an amazing thing and it will still seem odd to plenty of men that women might be interested in science or time travel, but believe me it's true. I actually saw a comment recently from a bloke who thought women didn't like sci-fi, and that we all read chick-lit and romance novels. Some of us do, of course, which is fine. Some of us, however, reads books like this one.

When I first started reading, I was instantly taken with these strong women of the 50's or 60's, brave and pioneering, embarking on something remarkable. They invent a time machine. And this starts a long and winding series of events, throughout time, which end with a murder. Or is the murder somewhere in the middle? Or in the past? The answer is all three, of course!

The book develops from the moment of creation to being something more modern, but maintains the nostalgia and class of the earlier timelines that weave in and out of the plot. It's interesting to see how the women of then and now are differently portrayed, but equally intelligent and independent. It's also interesting to consider how time travel would have affected the minds of the travellers, and indeed the people they interact with along the way. Putting the two things together isn't something I have seen before, and in this book it is done beautifully.

The writing is very elegant and precise, and I couldn't help but be reminded of a more modern and feminine version of H.G. Wells almost. That's the authority I felt the author held over the subject matter. I'm a big H.G fan, so that's a big compliment as far as I'm concerned.

I love the fact that there are only one or two incidental male characters in the book, and all the rest are female. This is so refreshing to me. None of the women are wishy-washy or reliant on the men in their lives. They are bold, thoughtful and unique. I think we are so used to fiction being dominated by men that it's nice to see truly strong female characters being introduced and becoming more and more popular culturally speaking. This book is a perfect example of that.

All I can say to finish is that this book was refreshingly different and interesting, and I hope that a female oriented book of this depth and character is a sign of things to come.

This book is a time travel story with a thriller twist spread over three timelines. We join the story in 1967 with four female scientists who are developing a means of time travel however, on the cusp of becoming pioneers in the industry one of them suffers a mental breakdown calling the validity of the research into question.

Along with the pioneers, we meet two further characters in Ruby, a grandchild of the scientist who had a breakdown and Odette a university student who discovers a body with no explanation for the preceding events.

This story is beautifully written with a strength of character, purpose and plot so compelling, it was hard at times to put it down and return to the real world. @Katemascarenhas has an ability to interweve both plot and sub-plot seemlessly to draw you deeper and deeper into the story whilst the sub-characters add depth and detail to the overall story.

I greatly appreciated the strength and determination of the predominantly female cast of characters, this is not something you often see in this genre and I felt it was handled with great gravitas and respect.

If you pick up one time travel book this year, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I adore time travel narratives, it's one of those things that will always make me pick up a book. We all have those positive "triggers" that will makes us choose one book over the other. And I am certainly glad that I got to read this one. For one, Kate Mascarenhas is from the Midlands, where I live. I always love to read books by local authors, such a thrill to find the same places you know in a book. Also, I liked the premise that four women invented time travel. Not a man in sight. And yes, this book is full of wonderful women, not a single cardboard cut out in sight, they are all different, some nice, some conflicted, some young, some old and in between, some are mothers, some are not. It made me realise how rare this is: A reflection on all sorts of women, women at the core of the book. And then there is the time travel: Interesting premise in that the time travel cannot alter outcomes. Mind-bending. Also a super on the edge mystery. I absolutely loved this.