Review: The Twin Paradox by Charles Wachter

The Twin Paradox by Charles Wachter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This has been sitting on my shelf for several years, and I finally picked it up.  I'd recommend this for fans of Michael Crichton or Dan Brown as it has that same type of vibe of their sci-fi thrillers.  There is quite a bit of science/pseudoscience  to sift through as well as more action packed thriller scenes.   I saw somewhere that this was being adapted to a movie, and I think that this will translate well.  I actually liked Jurassic Park better as a movie than I did the book, and I think the same is true for this. 

This follows a group of teens as they sort out the government's plans to gain scientific supremacy using time and cloning.  Having gathered the DNA of some of the greatest minds in history and brought them back to life, the government questions the impact of nature vs nurture with their latest experiment and wants these exceptional teens to solve the weakness in their particle accelerator where 3 minutes of our time equal 10 years inside a remote facility in Texas.  Russia is also interested in this technology, and both sides are racing to control time and scientific research because time is money after all.

I found this confusing at times.  This follows several characters and while the premise is very interesting it jumps from place to place which left me confused about what was happening.  I believe this was a conscious choice by the author as I was wondering what happened to so and so or what is going on with this plot point.  I think that will translate well to the screen, but in a book the gaps were too big to keep me engaged with the plot and the characters,  The author writes about certain plot points or certain characters from chapter to chapters, leaving that topic alone for several chapters until you forget about the details and then circles back to it.  In an almost 400 page book, I had to go back an look up what were things left off because I had forgotten about those topics, which really took me out of the storyline.  It took me almost 3 weeks to finish this because I lost interest and lost my place so often.  I found this to be very slow paced, versus the fast paced rollercoaster this was advertised to be.  I think I would have preferred this on audiobook to give it the life it needed for the action scenes, but all that is available is a virtual voice option from audible which I tried, but I couldn't listen too, it had zero intonation and emotion.  As this follows several different characters this lacked the character development I wanted to see from them.  I also wasn't connected or rooting for anyone.  I need a villain to hate or a hero to root for and I didn't feel like there was a clear line when it came to any particular character.

I thought this had promise and a really interesting concept.  I'm interested to see where book 2 is headed, but it doesn't look like it is going to be published anytime soon.  I thought the beginning of the book started out strong, but as it went on the pacing really slowed down, and I need a book like this to be fast paced and action packed to keep me interested.  

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