A quirky time loop/ travel novel that is more sci-fi than love story. The book starts out with Carter doing an experiment of time down to the milliseconds. It turns out that Carter is experiencing a time loop in 4 day cycles. He is trying to figure out how to get out of it.

During one of the cycles, he meets Mariana, a neuroscientist, visiting his workplace, the Hawke accelerator project in a futuristic San Francisco in 2080. Mariana is mourning the loss of her best friend and part of ReLive, a project for remembering. When Mariana realizes that she is also in the time loop after Carter tells her to remember a singular detail, she starts using her time on the ReLive project to help them get out of it. Carter starts to lose his memories after each cycle resets itself and they need to fix it before it’s too late.

This started out at Carter’s story before taking a turn and making it into Mariana’s story. While the first half sets up the story, it’s a lot more repetitive than I think it needs to be. I enjoyed the second half more than the first as that’s where the action really takes place.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/ MIRA for this eARC. A Quantum Love Story is out now.

A decent time loop story but I didn't love it. The first 50% is just okay, and the story finally picks up after that. But the ending isn't very satisfying and while the author claims he wanted to write a book with romance as a main plot point, it's kind of not.

Science fiction plus raw human emotion is a hallmark of Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen. I loved watching these characters trying their darndest to get out of this time loop situation. Add in a low simmer romance and themes of grief and friendship and this was a very layered book.

I listened to this on audiobook, and it took me a while to read. Although it has an interesting premisse, I felt like it was slow to get going and things felt really drawn out for a lot of the book. However, towards the ending I became more emotionally invested and I ended up loving the rest of the book.

The title for this novel is a bit misleading. It's really not a romance at all. It's primarily a time loop story and those aren't really my thing.

However, I did enjoy this novel. It was slow at times, but overall fast-paced and funny. I wanted the characters to have more depth. I’m not going to harp on the repetitiveness of this book since it’s sort of implied with the time loop, but there’s no believable romance to be found here, nor is the main character Marianna a particularly like-able person. In the words of Jessica Day I find it fundamentally weird that she’s not a dessert person.

Since there’s no romance, I was at least hoping for a little more action, a villain or some other main plot of some kind to take hold of the story but nothing really presents itself. There could have been an excellent twist story line with the half sister but if you’re reading this in hopes of that happening I’ll spoil it for you now and tell you that it will not.

That means what you’re left with is a pretty flat book about time loops and time travel, a nonexistent romance, and a cast of characters that leave quite a bit to be desired.

3.5 -4 stars...

I love books about time travel. This was heavier on the science, less on the love/romance. I am so fascinated by time loops, quantum jumping, etc . – albeit fiction, I was still intrigued and enjoyed this one.

Thank you to the publisher & netgalley!

Chen's new novel is a new addition to our Groundhog Day time travel stories. Originally, the author planned to offer this book as a time loop graphic novel for readers, but it never took off, and this project sat for years before he returned to it. And the question is why did he return?

Chen shared that during the pandemic, he felt like he was living in a time loop with an endless combination of waiting and extreme isolation through this season.

And this daily existence brought him back to this story as an homage to what he lived through as his lived experience. I’m sure that is an element we ALL can relate to.

This story offers a dual point of view that is set in 2090, where Carter Cho, a technician at a scientific lab, and Neuroscientist Mariana Pineda find themselves trapped in a never-ending time loop.

The initiation of this incident occurs when Mariana, newly grieving the loss of someone in her life, finds herself on an unexpected tour of Carter's secretive facility, where he's tinkering with the Hawke Particle Accelerator.

But their excursion takes a dramatic turn when the reactor unexpectedly detonates, hurling them into a bewildering time loop that spans four days.

As they are the only ones retaining memories from each cycle, they embark on a journey to unravel the mystery behind the loops while discovering some unexpected feelings for each other.

This book is for readers who like thorough explanations of the reason behind the why of the time loop rather than for readers who crave light time travel descriptions.

Of note, the second half of the novel weaves a more complex backdrop of quantum physics and leans heavier into science fiction while both characters admit that they're not really sure WHY these things are happening but the reader is given privy to each hypothesis as the time loop happens.

Chen is known for blending science fiction with heartfelt storylines and speaking to that, this has a couple of really charming elements, like the love and routines we crave for our pets, even when the world seemingly falls apart.

Carter is also obsessed with good food, and with his repeating time loop, he takes advantage of ordering from many fancy restaurants and eating loads of treats each day without worrying about his budget or his cholesterol.

At its center, it's also a storyline about how we can fight for each other when we know that times feel unsure or dangerous to someone we love.

All of this was beautiful, especially the first two or three loops, but this became a bit cumbersome as the story progressed and, ultimately, a hurdle with the pacing for moving the time loop forward.

This novel showcases my personal difficulties with time loop stories because I need light time travel set up, and I need the repeating patterns to REALLY start changing to hold my interest.

Speaking to the love story component, the author did admit that this element was something he had a hard time writing and that this fell outside of his wheelhouse because he shared that he is Asian and grew up without a lot of expressed emotions around him.

While this writing component was challenging for Chen, the romance was secondary to the time loop story and not as romantic as pitched by the title or through the threads of this novel. And, perhaps, that is showcasing Chen’s discomfort of trying something new as this is lightly embraced.

This novel stays firmly in the PG-romance realm, and I want to recommend it for readers who have teen readers who love science fiction. I see this novel easily being honored with an Alex Award as a great crossover book for a teen audience this year.

Patti Murin does a phenomenal job with the audiobook narration and Chen, certainly builds a believable imagined 2090 world with this science-fiction selection.

I have enjoyed Star Wars books by Mike before, but I just couldn’t get into this one. I am a mood reader, and I just don’t think I was in the right mood for this one. Might read again in the future.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the Arc.

Rating: 4/5 ⭐️

▫️Mixture of short and long chapters
▫️3rd person narration
▫️Time loops/time travel—very Groundhog Day-esque
▫️Set in the future, but felt current
▫️Themes of grief, love, friendship

I kept thinking about this book so I upped the rating to a 4/5 ⭐️ I really loved Mike Chen’s writing style (e.g., he *showed* that Mariana was grieving vs. telling us she was grieving). And boy did the friendship love story in this one get to my emotions! 😭 Got me cryin’ in the club.

This takes place in the 2080s, and ‘Motion Sickness’ by Phoebe Bridgers was mentioned as a classic from the 20s 👵🏻 The technology Mike Chen created in his futuristic world felt very Black Mirror-esque (e.g., AI, memory hacking).

The only reason I couldn’t give it a higher rating was that the Groundhog Day feeling was getting repetitive, and I found myself skimming at times. But I really grew to love the characters and I was ROOTING FOR THEM SO HARD!!

Definitely pick this one up if you loved the happier Black Mirror episodes like San Juniperro 🥹❤️

I thought this sci fi romance was really sweet. The romance was light and the sci fi was digestible for someone who doesn’t read a lot of this genre. I didn’t find it overly predictable and thought the pacing was good.

𝘊𝘰𝘻𝘺 𝘚𝘤𝘪-𝘍𝘪 • 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘰𝘱 • 𝘚𝘛𝘌𝘔 𝘙𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 • 𝘈𝘐
𝘕𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 • 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘍𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 • 𝘎𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤
𝘗𝘶𝘣 𝘋𝘢𝘵𝘦: 30 𝘑𝘢𝘯𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘺 2024

I think of this as cozy sci-fi more than romance as the love story was secondary to the time loop plot. “Cozy sci-fi” applies because of the budding romance/sparks, personal introspection, endearing pets, and food/cooking elements. I loved when Carter and Mariana were working together, splurging on new cuisines, jetting cross continents, and plotting new paths forward, and I would have loved to see more of that storyline develop in a future Epilogue or bonus chapter(s).

Synopsis:
Mariana is a neuroscientist working at a startup that has discovered a way to relive the past by imprinting vivid memories into the brain’s permanent record. Carter is a foodie with Michelin chef aspirations and a photographic memory. His day job: lab tech at a particle accelerator, where an inevitable accident is about to occur.

When Carter and then Mariana get stuck in the cross-hairs, they find themselves stuck in an infinite time loop, cursed to repeat the 4 days leading up to the explosion that renders the entire facility a pile of rubble. As they try to figure out what went wrong and how to correct it, they will learn more about themselves and each other.

Small gripe: the science aspects were confusing as can be the case with paradox of time loops. I found that if I thought too hard I had questions I couldn’t resolve re: how it all worked.

I received this advance reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review. I really enjoyed the characters and plot of this novel. It's consistently shifting timeline was almost like a third character in the story, pulling our characters together and apart. Really interesting and well written!

A Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen is science fiction meets Groundhog Day, which makes February an appropriate release date. The ending seems rather quick and less developed given the premise about time and space and as compared to the development of the story in 4 day increments with each time loop. Nevertheless, the emotion in it rings true and leaves a lasting image of love and love remembered. That makes the book work for me.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2024/02/a-quantum-love-story.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

Carter Cho recognizes that he’s in a time loop. He has four days to live, over and over and over and OVER again, with no way to stop it and no way out. All he can do is watch, wait and repeat. It’s boring, it’s disheartening, it’s downright depressing. Most of all it’s terribly, terribly lonely.

Until Carter decides to take one loop and do the opposite of everything he did the first and all the subsequent, mind-numbing, heart-breaking times he’s looped before. And in that opposition he manages to convince, coerce, drag another person into the loop with him.

Dr. Mariana Pineda and technician Carter Cho are opposites in every possible way, but all they have is each other. And a seemingly endless amount of time to figure out what keeps making the Hawke Accelerator accelerate itself into a catastrophic explosion, time after time after time – and resetting the world as everyone but the two of them knows it.

Neither of them has the training or the tools to diagnose what’s going wrong – but they are all they have. And that turns out to be more than enough. Just in the nick of, well, time.

Escape Rating B+: If the blurb or the description above are making you think of the movie Groundhog Day, you are not alone. Neither was it alone in my head as I was reading my way through the first part of the story – because time travel loops have been done before.

In other words, this loop has been looped before. As they do.

At one end of that time loop story perspective there’s Groundhog Day, which has kind of a sweet ending no matter how much of an asshole the protagonist (played by Bill Murray) is as the story begins. But Carter Cho is a really nice guy – if a bit of an underachiever according to his parents – so that resemblance isn’t 100%

The ending of A Quantum Love Story, or rather, all the endings of the world before the resets, have all of the explosive punch of the movie Edge of Tomorrow, although there’s no war in Quantum.

A Quantum Love Story felt more akin to the Stargate SG-1 episode “Window of Opportunity” as following the protagonists through the loops of that journey goes through many of the same stages that Carter and Mariana go through while following characters that one really does want to follow. Also there’s no real villain in “Window of Opportunity”, which is also true in Quantum. The story, the journey, the battle if you will, is to solve the mystery and break the cycle – not to break heads.

But the chasing down of just how many different time loop stories this one brought to mind kept me from being as invested in Carter and Mariana’s problem solving through their loops, although the emotional journey they took did hold my interest even as it briefly looked like it was heading for Flowers for Algernon territory which made for some tense moments for this reader. (Don’t worry too much, it doesn’t go there, but there were a few bits that just about gave me the weepies when it looked that way. Howsomever, the author has form for this, as that’s part of the direction that his lovely Light Years from Home went.)

The heart of the story, and it very much does have one, is in the relationship between Carter and Mariana, who begin as opposites in just about every sense of the word and bond through shared trauma. But what they discover through that sharing is that their version of opposites attract brings out the best in both of them, and that there are possibilities in life that neither of them ever imagined.

Including the possibility of a happy ever after with someone that they would otherwise never have had a chance to meet. A chance that will be whisked away if they ever manage to solve the problem and stop the resets.

The solution to both problems, to the endless resets of the time loop and to stopping those resets, turns out to be exactly the same thing. With one surprising and beautiful deus ex machina of an exception.

Ultimately, the repeating time loops with their repeating reminders of other time loop stories is both a bit of a bug AND a feature. After all this is a story about things repeating until they don’t, so it seems right that they kind of do. In the end I was charmed by the story and the characters as they worked through both repeating and not repeating time at the same time.

I’ll certainly be repeating my exploration of this author’s work and his signature combination of science fiction and relationship fiction with his next outing, hopefully this time next year. In the meantime, if you are intrigued by this review, check out the first chapter excerpt I posted last week. If you like SF with just a touch of romance and a heaping helping of relationship building and problem solving, you just might fall in love with A Quantum Love Story!

Carter has been stuck in a time loop that ends with an explosion, literally. He’s gone through it six times and knows exactly what will happen each time. This time, Carter decides to deviate, which causes him to accidentally bump into a gal called Mariana. And he realizes where she’s going is near where the explosion will happen and he wonders if there’s a connection.
Mariana has been going through the motions ever since her stepsister Shay went missing(presumed dead) 3 months ago and is ready to resign from her job. She decided to give it four more days, especially when her group of scientists are invited to go see The Hawke Accelerator, the place where Shay wanted to work. Where she meets Carter who seems to know her and is trying to convince her she’s in a time loop by putting her in the exact spot he was to help her remember. She remembers and now they have to work together to figure out how to get out of this time loop.

That was a very long summary 😂 I love books that deal with time, and add romance to it, even better!

I really enjoyed this book! It did have a little bit too much scientific jargon for me, but I really enjoyed the story and these two people just trying soooo hard to get out of this time loop. And then the adventures they go on just to take a break and live! The relationship they build over time and the romance is so sweet and also bittersweet. The way the story progresses, you’re basically stuck in this time loop too just wondering if we will ever get out, and you think they got it, when suddenly the time loop starts over and there’s just so many layers to get to the point that would solve it that I understand how Carter would feel down sometimes and want to give up.

Carter Cho made me think of Remy from Ratatouille 😂 His love for food and how he’s so offended by Mariana’s reaction to food and how he teaches her to savor the moment, and enjoy it, sustenance versus like a shake, what flavors do you taste or smell, etc. He is seriously just so adorkable and endearing and I just loved Carter so so much!

Mariana was more of the type A personality, but she also was going through grief after losing her closest friend and sister three months ago. She changed so much through this story. She allowed herself to live, to actually look at Carter differently especially after Shay always gave her a hard time of not giving guys a chance and being too picky for her own good, she started to savor moments like Carter, and I loved just seeing how her relationship with Carter changed.

And that ending! I love bittersweet endings and this one was just perfect for me 👌🏻 Heartbreaking and yet a happy ending!

If you enjoy books that involve time, and romance, then check this one out!

I received a free digital copy to read. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A Quantum Love Story is the best time travel/time loop book I’ve read in a while. I enjoyed every minute reading this book, flying through the pages.

Mariana and Carter are stuck in a 4-day time loop. A neuroscientist and technician, both fish out of water when it comes to quantum theory, they team up to find a way out. And what a great team they make. I loved these characters and I caught myself thinking about them when I wasn’t actively reading and even had dreams about their story.

Mike Chen expertly weaves a tale that is heartfelt, quirky and philosophical. It has fun twists that I did not see coming. It is science fiction with a bit of romance. Reflecting on the story, I think it’s about love in the broadest sense: romantic love, the love of friendship and self-love. As the story wrapped up, there was only one thing I wanted: more. The story ends full of hope and possibility and it’s beautiful but gah I needed more.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book!

The title is wonderful and really attracted me to the book. But I must warn you that this is not a contemporary rom-com. In fact, it is not a romance of any kind! Romance readers will know what I'm talking about and that sentence is just for you.

This is a slow building time loop story in which the possibility of romance between two people is a big part of the story. It isn't a hard core sci-fi story though! Very accessible for all levels of sci-fi readers.

Since it is a time loop tale, it did feel a bit repetitive for a while. Those who stick around will be rewarded with an overall cleverly written book.

I’m a fan of Mike Chen’s and this is the 5th book I’ve read of his. I prefer his sci-fi books and usually end up loving those. This book… IS definitely one of those!

In a near future, Carter and Mariana find themselves stuck in a four day time-loop where they are living the same four days over and over again. Think Groundhog’s Day but with science. But there are major surprises along the way that make this story so unique and completely different from the classic GHD storyline.

Carter and Mariana are the only ones who can remember what happened during each of the previous time loops so they work to try to figure out how to stop the loops, and fall in love with each other a little more each loop.

Chen has done it once again by bringing in such amazing loving characters, you have to stay just to see how their story ends.

And the food! If you’re a foodie, read this book! If you love science, read this book. If you love futuristic science fiction, read this book. If you love time travel, read this book. If you love romance, read this book!

I love futuristic Sci-Fi, science, and time travel. When the science goes over my head, yes, I glaze over, but I still love it!!

This book was such a satisfying read for me and I’ll be raving about it for some time!

*Thanks so much to Mira Books and NetGalley for the gifted eGalley!*

In A Quantum Love Story, Mike Chen takes on romance set in his usual science fiction setting.
Grieving her best friend's recent death, neuroscientist Mariana Pineda decides to start a new life after one last week of consulting at a top-secret particle accelerator. While she is there a strange man stops her. He claims they have met before and that each four-day time period stops and loops back. He is desperate for Mariana to remember. Thanks to a new medication in a new trial, she can recall and work with the man Carter. Mariana is keen to help but is surprised when she starts having feelings for him. Can they break the loop? Can their romance truly blossom?

I have enjoyed Mike Chen’s books including We Could Be Heroes, A Beginning at the End, and Light Years from Home. What sets this book the most apart is that Chen focuses on romance. That being said this is first and foremost a science fiction book and the romance isn’t overly heavy. Don’t go in expecting a relationship like books classified as romance. It works for the story set up and you are never annoyed that the romance overtakes the important work the characters have to do to save the world.
I am a sucker for a time loop story, so I enjoyed the basic idea. The story develops past just a time loop into another kind of sci-fi setting. This development makes perfect sense even though I didn’t see it coming. This enriches the story. My big negative is that the book starts with Carter’s viewpoint but we never revisit it. I would have enjoyed back-and-forth viewpoints for any amount of time that made sense with the story.
The author dives into the origin of the book in the Acknowledgements explaining the origins began as a graphic novel of part of an IP and there are some clues in the story about what it was (my opinion is Quantum Leap; when you read it, tell me what you think). It then moved to an idea for just a time loop graphic novel that never came to fruition. The point being that the story sat for a while before Chen came back to it in a post-pandemic time. This is where a lot of the emotional inspiration came from. The book perfectly captures the idea of isolation and how time seemed repetitive as your life seems to stop. It also explores how technology allowed us to continue to make connections, work, and stay sane. Even if you don’t read it through the same lens (which I didn’t), you still understand these ideas and feel for the characters from experiences in your own life. (I may be biased on this though; I have several conditions that make me immuno-compromised, so even without COVID, I have these experiences.)
Chen puts a lot of work into designing a fun sci-fi story, injecting real emotions and traumas, and adding a primary romance (something he hasn’t done before). These elements are balanced well, and the story is enjoyable.

One of my favorite things about Chen’s books is that he always writes about things I don’t care to read, but I end up loving his books anyways. I also wouldn’t dare pretend to understand how the science works, but I really don’t care by the time the story wraps up because it’s just so human and has so much heart. Chen’s books are much more than the science they’re based on; they’re about the people and the bonds they form. I don’t care much for time travel and time loops because the science behind them just boggle my mind, but I adored A Quantum Love Story, and never really felt the need to understand how it worked. This book was all about Carter and Mariana, two people who end up stuck in a four day time loop and must find a way to stop it.

Carter Cho has a complicated history with his parents who wanted him to be more than just a technician at the Hawke Accelerator, but Carter loves food experiments more than science experiments. Mariana Pineda is a scientist with ReLive, whose work helps people retain memories, and she and her group have been invited to Hawke since the two groups have been working together, but she hasn’t been the same since her best friend Shay went missing 3 months ago. Thanks to an explosion, Carter ends up in a time loop, and manages to bring Mariana into it with him, leaving them as the only two people who know they’re stuck in a time loop. They’ll need to put their heads together, what with Carter’s photographic memory and Mariana’s ability to focus and plan, to get out of the loop. But then something happens one loop, leaving only one of them left to get everyone unstuck.

I haven’t read Chen’s second novel, but that one was often called his pandemic novel as I understand it has people coming out of a pandemic. However, considering the second half of A Quantum Love Story, this is more appropriately his pandemic novel. This whole novel speaks heavily to the isolation people spent years facing and enduring. The first half has Carter and then Carter and Mariana essentially alone in the world as the only two people who know they’re stuck in a time loop. While they are free to move around, go places, do things, it’s impossible to create any other meaningful relationships as they reset every four days. The second half isolates one from the other for decades, forcing them into what sounded like an insane version of isolation. It was heartbreaking, and might definitely touch more than one nerve, but it’s also beautifully done, commenting gently on the effects of isolation without making it more painful than it had to be.

I adored Carter and Mariana. They were so different, but ended up working so well together. This is the first time Chen has worked a romance into the story and, while it definitely had a presence, it was just so gently woven into the story that it felt natural and never stole the spotlight from the story of being stuck in a time loop. Chen brought these two together with such a deft hand that it felt more like a bond forming between two people rather than a simple romance. And they worked brilliantly together, their weaknesses and strengths balancing each other. Carter was just a lot of fun, taking delight in all the delicious food that could never impact his health and enjoying life whenever he could. Mariana is a lot more serious, but Carter brings some light back into her life even as she still misses Shay, and she becomes something of a grounding force to Carter. It was fun watching them get to know and figure out how to mesh their lives together, making it heartbreaking when they were forced apart.

Despite the things that made me ache for the characters, I really had a lot of fun with this book. I never quite knew where it was going and I could never figure out how they were going to manage to get out of the time loop. I did love that it made sense, and absolutely did not take the easy way out. I’ll still never understand the science, but I appreciated there was no easy science-related fix. It led to an excruciating second half, but it all paid off in the best way. It also made the first half feel that much more fun. There was just so much possibility, so many things Carter and Mariana could explore together. The way they came together and came to understand each other was so heartwarming. I loved that they could do and try anything, always hoping that this plan would be the one that would break the loop.

There was one thread I didn’t feel quite too sure about as the story went along. Mariana is clearly very affected by the loss of her best friend Shay. They were closer than sisters, and Mariana could never shake the loss as she visited Hawke over and over since it was where Shay wanted to work. It was so sweet the way Mariana tried her best to bring Shay along, but I also couldn’t quite fathom why Shay was such a huge part of the story. She was everywhere. Mariana was always carrying her around in some way. But then it made sense, and I absolutely loved it. Usually, I hate rereading books because I love the feeling of discovering things for the first time and can never get that back, but now I want to reread this to hunt for clues. This thread was so sweet and I loved the impact it made on me when information was revealed.

A Quantum Love Story is everything I love Chen’s books for. There’s the science that I never felt pressured to understand, the heart, the bonds that form between the characters, and an all around softness that made this so easy to read and so easy to feel something about. I loved that it focused on the people and the things they went through, not bothering to make it easy and sugar coated, but doing it in a way that made sense while not coming off as too harsh. I loved the romance in it, and, even though I’m dying to know what happens after the last page, I really liked all the possibilities that came with the ending. This was a delightful and fun read.

Thank you to Justine Sha at MIRA for a review copy and the opportunity to take part in the book blog tour for A Quantum Love Story. All opinions expressed are my own.