The Tourist by Robert Dickinson is a time travel novel that left me wanting. I did manage to get to the end, but it was a struggle at times. The tidbits of information that were supposed to move the plot along were few and far between and ambiguous at best. I love books that make me think and put all the puzzle pieces together in order to have that climatic moment where I can sigh with relief because I get it. That did not happen for me with this book. There were too many puzzle pieces missing for me to get a complete picture. Therefore, I was left wanting in the end.

Then to make matters worse the plot jumps around in time, to various places and different people. Making it more difficult to keep up with what was going on and whose time line I was reading about. I especially did not care for the use of second person for one of the characters. I have read other books were that technique worked well. Its use here turned murky waters to muddy.

On a bright note, I have never read such a unique time travel story. I always love when an author has the imagination to do something this distinctive. It is a pity that so many other elements of this book just did not work.

For those readers who love time travel, you can probably overlook the flaws and enjoy this one. I could not. This is the reason for my low rating and why I could not bring myself to write a synopsis.

I received a free copy from the publisher, via Net Galley, in exchange for my honest review.

See more reviews and author interviews on my blog at www.thespineview.com.

Well written. Nice plot. Really enjoyed this book.

Not to everyone's taste for sure, but I enjoyed trying to keep up with the time-wimey twists and turns of this noir thriller immensely. I don't think you should read this novel as an honest attempt at imagining the future though, or you'll be sorely disappointed; instead read this as the author's tongue-in-cheek attempt at putting a highly intelligent twist on noir, along the lines of China Miéville's The City & the City.

I loved the theme and general idea of the novel. That said, I thought it needed better plotting and execution. It was very confusing and overall lacked world building.

Excellent book. Great storyline and characters. A real page turner. I would recommend this book.

I hate to write negative reviews so I'll settle for simply giving this book 2 stars. It has a lot of potential but still needed a lot of work before publication

The Tourist is a challenging novel time that puts the reader in the role of detective. The story is told through alternating point of views, the plot full of secrets and conspiracies.

My biggest critique is that the ending falls flat. The book builds up in suspense and speculation, plot points start to connect, but then the story just ends. It feels almost as though the author didn’t know how to end the story. The build-up doesn't lead to anything worthwhile and the “race” to the finish line ends up being more of a confused, disjointed bellyflop.

This was a tough one. I like the ideas, but execution wasn't quite all there. Parts dragged and while I think the confusion of overlapping timelines was somewhat purposeful, it became frustrating. Even at the end, I'm not sure I really got it.

I honestly had no clue what was happening during this book. I thought it might have been the second book in a series.

This is a difficult book to review and in fact a difficult book to read. Make no mistake this book is not for the lazy reader. If you want a book that challenges you and may not answer all your questions this book is for you.

Too convoluted and confusing. I may be too dumb to get it, but I just couldn't follow the plot lines. And it's not that I need to understand everything, after all I love the backwards-fowards relationship between Doctor Who and River Song, and this should have been just like that. Even if I don't get it, I want to get caught up in the action and get invested in the characters. It didn't happen with this book, I didn't care for any of the characters and the structure was just too complicated to follow. Too bad, I really wanted to like this.

I really wanted to like this book. The beginning of it was promising. I didn't realize for some reason that this book was about time travel. I just couldn't follow it. This book goes through several centuries and goes back and forth between characters too much. I gave up reading this book around the 25% mark.