3.5 stars. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a while to get into this book - the first third was a lot of set-up, which I realize was needed, but kind of dragged for me. Once the time-travel took place, I was more engaged with the book and the twists and turns that come with this sort of topic. It was also fairly technical in quite a bit of the book, so keep that in mind. I thought the characters were well done, except for the main character - he actually came across as much younger than he turned out to be. I was thinking early twenties at the most -- but he's actually in his 30s. The overall story, however, ended up being something I enjoyed reading, once I got into it. The author is a screenwriter, and I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up a movie at some point. Certainly a decent debut novel, and I would try others by the author.

I didn't personally enjoy it as much as I would have liked, but I can see its value and where it might be enjoyable to others.

All Our Wrong Todays is the first novel by Elan Mastai, and is receiving serious praise. Well deserved praise in my estimation.



Tom Barren is the one who destroyed the universe as he knew it. He went from a semi-utopian world, similar to what we had envisioned in Sci-Fi of the 1950's. Flying cars, automated houses, helpful robots, all that sort of thing. But Tom erases that future when he travels back in time and accidentally disrupts the event that brought that world to fruition.



The thing that makes Tom's base timeline possible is a thing called the Goettreider machine. A machine powered by the movement of the Earth itself. A perpetual motion machine, that produces completely clean energy. Tom, as the first time traveler, goes back in history to witness this event, and his presence causes an accident that results in the Goettreider machine never being used.



Much of the novel focuses on Tom's attempts to right this wrong. To fix the universe to what it was supposed to be, if he hadn't screwed it up. But then be begins to realize that if he fixes it, so that his timeline comes back, all the people in this timeline would never exist. From his alternative parents, the sister he has in this timeline that didn't exist in his original one. The woman he falls in love with. All of them would not only cease to exist, but their potential would never have existed. And that weighs heavily on Tom.



This existential crisis is what powers most of the book, and it does get a little repetitive. It was an interesting read, and as Mastai is a screenwriter, this book seems like it belongs on a screen. And it probably will get that treatment. If you're a fan of 50's and 60's Sci-Fi, Heinlein, and potentially Douglas Adams, you'll probably enjoy All Our Wrong Todays. But if Sci-Fi, or Sci-Fantasy isn't your bailiwick, you're probably not going to find it nearly as amusing or enjoyable.

Very fun and interesting and hard to put down. Great narrative voice, which is a Thing for me. I don't like the extremely short chapters, which just gives the whole thing a really unpleasantly choppy feel. And there were occasional sideline summaries of what you have just read that -- well, they made sense within the story, or were subsequently explained, but I couldn't help but wonder why *I* had to read them, and what function they served in this novel..... But overall, a really fun, thought-provoking book!

Have you ever wondered if our world made a wrong turn somewhere? Sure, we have computers and smartphones and shiny video games, but what happened to the yesteryear dreams of jetpacks and space travel and flying cars? Well, now we know whom to blame: Tom Barren, the world’s worst time-traveler and the protagonist of Elan Mastai’s debut novel “All Our Wrong Todays.”

As it turns out, the most important event in human history happened on July 11th, 1965, when an eccentric scientist named Lionel Goettreider launched a device that harvested a new type of energy. The Goettreider Engine revolutionized everything, solved the energy crisis and turned the world into a utopia. Goettreider himself dies during the experiment (taking 16 fellow scientists with him), but that just helped cement his status as the new messiah of the utopian world. (The unfortunate scientists are remembered as “the 16 witnesses.”)

The story begins when our hapless protagonist, the scion of a famous physics professor, gets picked as a backup in the first ever time travel expedition. The grateful people of the futuristic 2015 want to go back in time (and space, accounting for the planetary movement) to witness the famous 1965 experiment. The end result is Tom waking up in our timeline, in our 2015, which to him seems like a dystopian nightmare. The Goettreider Engine doesn’t exist; buildings aren’t organically grown from smart materials; we use gas-guzzling cars instead of the fancy flying ones; worst of all, you have to pay other adults to pay your hair! And, on top of all that, the world he grew up in has ceased to exist, along with all his friends and relatives. Meet Tom Barren, destroyer of worlds.

As a self-proclaimed sci-fi junkie, I have to say – this book is probably the best time travel book I’ve had the pleasure to encounter. (The runner-ups are “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu and “Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey” by Chuck Palahniuk.) It deconstructs just about every time travel trope out there, flirts with a few that are either brand new or downright extinct, and provides dozens of quotable zingers and assorted deep thoughts.

The 380-page story is told from a first-person perspective, and we get to know Tom Barren well: an aimless 32-year-old who grew up in the shadow of his father, never had a lasting relationship and, despite being smarter than an average bear, has a remarkable talent for ruining things. (The fact that he has to share his mind with his alternate-universe self doesn’t help.) The ongoing, unceasing mental narrative reminded me a lot of the aforementioned “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,” expect much more so.

“All Our Wrong Todays” offers something unique for fans of both hard sci-fi and human interest stories. On the one hand, the book goes into quite a lot of detail regarding the plot holes of most time travel stories. (A recurring plot point is having to track down the exact spatial coordinates – miss by 3″ and you’re done for.) On the other hand, a huge part of the plot is dealing with the impossibly large implications of wiping out an entire timeline. On top of that, there’s time travel ethics: if you change history and end up accidentally getting a new relative, would reversing the change count as murder? If you liked “Safety Not Guaranteed” (probably the best human-interest time travel movie out there), you’ll love this book because it’s just like that, but amplified tenfold.

It’s hard to believe this is a debut novel: there are plot twists you won’t see coming, turns of phrase that will stick in your mind long after you finish the book. It sets a high standard for all the other sci-fi writers, newbie or otherwise, and should be on every sci-fi fan’s bookshelf.

I give this book five out of five stars.

Full disclosure: I received an advance reader copy of the book in exchange for an honest review – but then loved it so much that I pre-ordered a hardcover copy.

Someone described this book as "Back to the Future" meets "Dark Matter". It was so much more than that. I don't even know where to begin, so I'm just going to say pick this book up and give it a chance. At times the narration annoyed me to the point that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish it, but the story carried me along and by the end I didn't want to put it down.

Mastai's novel is a wild ride that combines science fiction with philosophy in one fast moving package. The writing is electric, with twists and turns you don't expect, as well as thoughtful musings on how the world around us shapes who we are, and we can shape the world.

The Short Of It:
A funny, imaginative mind-bender about time travel, finding purpose, and the world we're meant to be in.

The Long Of It:
Tom Barren lives in a 2016 that's a technological utopia, made possible by the 1965 invention of a clean, infinite energy source. His world has flying cars, food synthesizers, robots and Sunday jaunts to the moon, not to mention extremely low crime and poverty rates and what basically amounts to world peace -- and yet Tom is not happy.

His father is an genius inventor who's perpetually disappointed in his son, and his mother just died in a freak accident. He's depressed, his life lacks purpose and direction, he has no girlfriend and few friends. He's basically a loser.

And that's before a royal screw-up with a time travel machine lands him in our version of 2016. The thing is, in our world (which seems like a hideous wasteland to Tom), he's an extremely successful architect with a loving father, a mother who's still alive -- and a sister! As Tom navigates this alternate world, gets to know his new self and tries desperately to figure out how to set things right and return where he belongs, he begins to wonder if maybe -- despite its scratchy cotton clothing, books made of paper, ugly buildings, polluted air and distinct lack of self-driving hover cars -- he'd rather stay in our world.

That's where the book takes a surprising turn into intense, enthralling, mind-bending territory. If you liked Blake Crouch's sci-fi thriller "Dark Matter" (one of my favorite reads of 2016), you'll enjoy "All Our Wrong Todays."

I really wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this book -- all I knew was that it involved time travel from a place where 1950s fantasies about the future actually happened -- but I was so pleasantly surprised by this addicting story that I read the entire thing in two days. I loved the imaginative, whimsical look at what our world could be if the we'd had completely clean, neverending energy for the past 50 years, and I enjoyed the conversational writing style (the book is posed as Sam's memoir of the time travel misadventure that changed his life).

Despite the time travel element, the inventions and the theories, I'd classify this book more as regular fiction than science fiction (though, of course, there's some of that too). It's got a lot of action going on, but I'd say above all it's a character study of Sam as he searches for purpose and peace in his life and deals with the unintended effects of his choices. And that makes it a good choice for all readers, even if sci-fi isn't in your reading wheelhouse. "All Our Wrong Todays" was fun, riveting and thought-provoking -- plus impossible to put down -- and I happily give it my recommendation!

*I received a free advance copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Time Travel Gone Wrong

Tom Barren lives in the kind of world science fiction authors have been writing about for years: flying cars, a focus on entertainment, food that doesn’t go bad. It seems like paradise. The problem is he’s a screw-up. His father is a genius, but Tom can’t seem to find himself which leads to a difficult relationship with his brilliant father.

When Tom’s mother dies, his father tries to give him another chance. The great next frontier is time travel, and Tom’s father thinks he can master it. He has trained chrononauts ready to go. Tom’s father adds him to the team as the understudy of the most promising chrononaut. This would be fine. Tom would never get a chance to time travel, but the best chrononaut becomes unable to take the mission. Tom decides to go and ends up in a very wrong place, 2016 in our world. Needless to say there are no flying cars and other amenities. Now Tom has to decide whether he wants to go back or stay in this strange land.

This is a clever story, and Tom is an interesting character. He engages in lots of soul searching about why he has so much trouble. One reason is that he’s not a genius like his father. It’s easy to empathize with Tom. He’s a believeable character.

The book is very slow starting. Tom spends pages telling us that he made a terrible mistake, taking us into his world, and providing his family background. I found this section much too long, but when he actually gets to time travel and ends in the wrong place, the action picks up.

If you like science fiction and are interested in time travel, this is an amusing book.

I received this book from Penguin for this review.

Wow. I started out not fond of the protagonist, took a little while to get into it, but it just got better and better. I can't speak to the intricacies of time travel; the construction of this story worked for me. It got really suspenseful there near the end, and I couldn't put it down by that point. Kinda meta and really quite fun.

This book kind of defies description - it's about time travel, alternate realities, identity, family, science, philosopy, love, all told with a self-deprecating and slightly snarky tone. Quite original and unique, totally bonkers, and kind of brilliant.

Known concept of time travel paradox and alternative universes with the same question of which universe is better. I had a hard time keeping my interest in the book for the first half but did manage to finish it. Still go by my initial review of it's a great book to help me fall asleep quickly.
The author seems to want to convey that no matter which world we live in (technologically advanced, current, world at war, etc.), there is something wrong with that world, hence the title of the novel. The first third of the book was mostly technology explanations of the "advanced" world, and written almost comedic that it reminded of the writing style of The Martian, but a poor version of it. And the style was not carried through the rest of the novel.
In terms of characters, they weren't developed well enough for me. The main character just seemed like he couldn't find anything satisfactory and always pining for something "better" no matter what universe he was in, which I suppose is true for a lot of people (The grass is greener on the other side). All supporting characters were flat.
The flow of the story was good, there just wasn't enough conflict for me. I didn't connect with the main character enough to make his dilemma of alternate universes worth pondering over. I like stories that make me think further on the philosophical/ethical conflicts of anything (ie. Black Mirror)
The world building was actually fairly good. I had a decent image of the technologically advanced world, etc.
All in all, there is nothing in this novel that stands out to me. It wasn't poorly written, just nothing enjoyable or attention catching about it.

This was a book about time travel. I loved how it was narrated by Tom. As per his dad, he was a loser. Everything he touched turned out bad. He tried several jobs and none of them had ever worked out for him. His dad, of course, was a genius. Everything he touched turned into gold (or into the greated invention ever) and his dad was working on a time machine. The night before his dad's time machine is going it's first ever visit back into time, Tom sleeps with the leading chrononaut on the mission. Naturally, he gets her pregnant and screws up the whole mission. His father is P.O.'d. Yet again his son has touched something and messed it up.

Tom decides to go on the mission himself. He goes back to 1965. He then returns back to 2015 and discovers, you guessed it. He messed it up. There are no longer flying cars, robots, fingertouch accesses, buttons you push and the food is delivered, etc. Nope 2015 is pretty much how we see it. There is no Jetson era anymore.

Tom is on a mission to get his world back.

This was an very entertaining read. It definitely held my interest. There were a few times when they would talk this science gobbly goop and my eyes would bleed, but fortunately that was rare and short. There were definitely a few laughs. On the whole, entertaining, enjoyable and definitely recommendable.

Huge thanks to Penguin Group Dutton for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

Writing science fiction always seems like the hardest genre to me--there is always a problem to solve. When done right, the reader is transported directly into an alternate universe; when done wrong, all of the focus goes on the lack of research and the awkwardness or lack of world-building. The author has to be able to explain the problems and solutions well enough for a person like me to at least grasp the concept to make it believable--and also hold up to those smart enough to pick apart the numbers and equations in their heads.

All Our Wrong Todays is science fiction done WELL. I was immediately immersed into Tom's whorling world of time travel between 2016 and 1965--and I had previously put down two books as DNF because I could not focus on anything. I was in serious danger of a book slump when I picked up Elan Mastai's first novel. But instead, Tom's fictional memoir saved both me and his world from total destruction.

This book does have some problems. Everybody in the book is straight, and while there are POC, they are mostly background characters. Also, the relationships are a little sketchy, although the narrator does acknowledge that fact. He knows he's an awkward guy going about everything the wrong way. Still--they are a bit problematic.

I am conflicted, because I hate "mental illness as a twist"--but I don't think that is what is being done here. The book is a legit time travel story, but it does unpack some heavy mental illness and domestic abuse issues as a part of the plot. The narrator challenges and discusses them in the text. I can't explain further without spoiling the book, but I think the author does a really good job of writing these issues in without using them as a plot device.

At first, I thought this was going to be a really great escape book for Inauguration Weekend. And it IS a good one to dive into, for sure. But this one will hit you deep. Can a book be fun, challenging, and heart wrenching all at the same time? Because All Our Wrong Todays certainly makes the effort.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and review this book!

I'll admit I have a love/hate relationship with time travel - it's always so confusing! But this book is definitely not your typical time travel story. It's funny, it's sweet, it's confusing - it's mostly very original.

Tom lives in a world that is the epitome of what a future world could be - peace, free energy, food replicators, hover cars and on and on. All of this is because a man created a generator to produce energy without any of the typical ills associated with that. Tom hasn't quite found his place in this world - his father is a genius working on a time travel machine, his mother is dead, and an accident happened with the girl of his dreams. So he hops in the time machine which is set to go back and witness the creation of this energy generator. And everything goes wrong. Tom eventually finds himself back in 2016 but it's a very different world - it's basically our world.

The way this book is written will make you laugh and keep you intrigued. Definitely worth a ride!

I had to mark this book as DNF. It was impossible for me to get into the book due to formatting issues and the random appearance of the numbers S32 and N33 and the line "All Our Wrong Todays xx"....in the middle of a sentence, at the beginning of a paragraph.... I apologize, but this along with the complexity of the story would not allow me to comprehend what I was reading. If the book were republished in a readable format, I would consider giving it another chance.

Tom Barren is a massive screw-up. He has a job only because his father is a scientific genius, and allows Tom to work in his laboratory, where the elder Barren is perfecting a machine designed for time travel. Earlier scientific advances have ensured that everyone is fed, clothed, and cared for; there is an unlimited source of energy available, and pretty much all your basic needs are met. Tom is tapped for a position as an understudy to Penelope, an aspiring chrononaut who experienced a spectacular wash-out as an astronaut. His huge crush on Penelope leads them to spend one night together, where Penelope becomes pregnant, making her ineligible for the time travel mission.

In an effort to redeem himself and his father’s project, Tom projects himself back over 60 years, to the exact place and time the Goettreider Engine was first demonstrated, a piece of amazing technology that allowed Tom’s world to be basically carefree – and while visiting 1965, Tom manages to completely alter the course of history.

I love time travel, in all its variations. I love the potential for change and the possibility of something better over the horizon. All Our Wrong Todays, however, did not capture my interest. I didn’t feel any kind of spark from Tom, and I was tired of reading about all of his disasters. There wasn’t anything I could grab onto and relate to. I was really disappointed, because I wanted so much to like this book, but I just didn’t enjoy it.

I picked up All Our Wrong Todays because of the idea that our present – our truth – is the dystopia. I figured it would be refreshing change to the glut of future and/or magical dystopias out there. I didn’t get what I was expecting. What Elan Mastai gave me was better.

There is a certain bluntness to the way the story is told that makes it feel almost raw and therefore more believable. Even though Mastai does employ a few typical tricks, he – the narrator – admits to doing so when he does them. That works surprisingly well.

All Our Wrong Todays isn’t really about the past, present, or future. Maybe that’s why it’s such a good story. It’s about Tom Barren, whom most everyone can recognize as the ‘never good enough’ that resides inside us. He’s not extremely intelligent, nor does he have a wealth of common sense. He’s not a hero, and he’s really not even that brave.

At the beginning, even though he’s a grown up, he’s not grown up. By the end of All Our Wrong Todays, he’s still not a hero, still not smart, and maybe a bit too feelsy, but he’s grown up. And watching him grow up? It’s addictive. You become invested in his now even as he’s trying to fix the past and future. I think if Tom was even a bit more ‘typical male as displayed in sci-fi books’ I wouldn’t have liked this book nearly as much as I did. But he’s not, and I did.

Elan Mastai is a talented author. His experience writing for film has definitely helped him in shaping All Our Wrong Todays into a gem that’s a lot more polished feeling than it otherwise would be from a debut author. He’s able to tell the story, poke at the human race, make us long for something we’ll probably never have, but convince us that maybe we might get there someday. It’s a book filled with quotable passages. Everything from stuff that makes you think to stuff that makes you snort. I’m only going to mention one, though:

""People are despondent about the future because they're increasingly aware that we, as a species, chased an inspiring dream that led us to ruin... The better things we build keep making it worse. The belief that the world is here for humans to control is the philosophical bedrock of our civilization, but it's a mistaken belief. ""

It’s not perfect. The relationship between Penelope and Tom is a bit too convenient / contrived. The very beginning and the end of their relationship is fine. It’s the middle that had me rolling my eyes a little bit. But Tom is young-ish and hormones are hormones, and hormones make you be stupid and/or see stupid. So it’s easy to move past.

The only other issue I had was that the endings just kept coming. The last five or six chapters all feel like they were the original last chapter, but he just couldn’t quite stop writing just a little bit more. It introduced an element of frustration that I hadn’t experienced with the book up until that point.

Overall, though, All Our Wrong Todays is a time-travel novel done right, and well worth picking up.

All Our Wrong Todays is a really fun time-travel story. It isn't the typical time-travel novel with people jumping back and forth through various time periods. Tom is from a futuristic 2016 and gets stranded in our 2016 due to a time-travel mishap to 1965 that altered the future, Tom's future.Tom is torn between saving the future and all the people that never exist in this new reality but that would mean losing people he cares about in this new reality as well. It's a story of fate, love, family, and loss. The entire story is told from Tom's point of view. He is usually speaking to the reader. There is science but it doesn't make your head spin and cause your eyes to glaze over. I found the book to be a fast paced and enjoyable read. I wouldn't be surprised if this book becomes a movie.

I had a hard time getting in to this book at first. It seemed like the storyteller was talking about the same things a lot and lamenting over the same things. But once he appeared in the alternate timeline, the story picked up and I enjoyed how it ended.