Charlie isn't looking for his world to change. One night he grabs a cab with a stranger. The man in the purple hat distracts him with conversation until Charlie is hit with a cloud of purple smoke. He wakes up as a Detective and someone quickly replaces his heart with a bomb. He's got twenty four hours to find someone else's missing heart and figure out what the heck happened.

The text digitally on this one is a bit hard to read, but I think that's more of a formatting download error than what the final version of the book will appear as.

I enjoyed this book, its a pretty niche scifi/fantasy novel that wont appeal to everyone.

The concept of metaphoria had me intrigued and the detective agency was a brilliant idea.

The theme throughout the book of the ticking heart was good.

Definitely worth a read and not your typical detective/scifi/ personal growth book.

This book has very very tiny print. I emailed the publishers in case I could get another copy and tried downloading it multiple times, but since I could not read it (the entie book was condensed to 89 pages with the font really really small- it is an almost 200+ page book accorsing to the website.) I will write a proper review if I ever get my hands on a better copy.

My thanks to Coach House Books for an eARC via NetGalley of Andrew Kaufman’s ‘The Ticking Heart’ in exchange for an honest review.

I am not certain what I just read. Its premise certainly seemed interesting and quirky. After nearly two years Charlie Waterfield isn’t adjusting to the breakup with his wife. He is lonely. When he orders an Über he isn’t pleased to find that he is sharing with a stranger in a large purple hat. He man in the hat tells Charlie about the city of Metaphoria and before Charlie knows it there is a cloud of purple smoke and poof! ...

Charlie finds that he is behind the only desk in the Epiphany Detective Agency in ....Metaphoria. His first client is Shirley Kintsugi who wants Charlie to find her husband’s missing heart. She insists that he takes the case and to make sure that he does she plunges a knife into his chest, removes his heart and replaces it with a bomb with a 24-hour countdown. That’s quite an incentive!

Ok well that explains the title and it’s clear that this short novel is meant to be dreamlike or nightmarish. I am not familiar with Andrew Kaufman though a brief investigation reveals that his novels seem to involve metaphoric elements. I quite enjoy fables, metaphors, and the surreal but here the character and setting just didn’t click with me.

My reading experience was also difficult from a technical perspective as there was only an ePub edition to download and the text size was so teeny tiny and would not increase in size via settings. This made it very hard to read even with strong reading glasses.

It was a difficult novel to rate. I decided on 2.5 stars and rounded up to 3 as the technical problems I experienced were not really indicative of the novel’s content.

Thank you to Coach House Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

From the off, I have to say I had massive problems downloading this file - I tried at least six options, variations and work-arounds, and judging by the info on Goodreads, I think I was only able to download and read the first part of this book. What I was able to read, I really enjoyed. I liked the quirkiness and creativity the author used to illustrate the philosophical underpinnings of life, and the resolution of the hero's predicament. The elements the author introduced reminded me a lot of one of my favorite children's books, "The Phantom Tollbooth", and I found it a very satisfying read.

The protagonist's developing character and odyssey are different in this one. The plot is very unique and metaphorical. Literally! Metaphoria is a world of poetry and sentience, and it was quite exceptional how the author managed to tackle several emotional elements.
I really liked how this book was different, at least for me.
Best of luck and thanks for the opportunity.

I always suffer a little of bit of trepidation when an author I've followed for years releases a new book. I'm always waiting for the almost inevitable decline in quality in their writing. Happily, that is definitely isn't the case here. The Ticking Heart is classic Kaufman; a perfect amount humour, sweetness, as well as heart, encased in a crispy quirky coating.

The story was engaging from the onset, and the my only disappointment with the book was that it was over so quickly.

Just a genuine delightful read. Perfect little pick-me-up.

Highly recommended.

With kind thank to Netgalley and Coach House Books for the ARC. Will post to Goodreads.

The Ticking Heart was fun but not at all what I expected. Charlie seems to be stuck - still hung up on his ex-wife and in an ambivalent relationship - when he finds himself unexpectedly in Metaphoria, where everything is a metaphor and he is a detective. As Charlie tries to solve a mystery in order to save his own life he encounters both the denizens of Metaphoria and people from his real life (some of whom have been transformed entirely). Kaufman builds an interesting, all-encompassing world in Metaphoria, but I was surprised at how fast this one was - I read it really quickly. I think I expected more mystery and detective work, but it was really Charlie bumbling his way through the new world he's found himself in. I enjoyed it though and would recommend it to people looking for a light fantasy read.

One cold winter night, Charlie shares a cab with a stranger in a purple hat. As they talk, a cloud of purple smoke overwhelms him and he wakes up to find himself behind the only desk in the Epiphany Detective Agency. Charlie, as it turns out, is trapped in Metaphoria, an otherworldly place that reality has forgotten, a place where everything means something else. His first client is Shirley Kintsugi, who insists on hiring Charlie to find her husband's missing heart. In fact, she's so insistent that she replaces Charlie's heart with a bomb. He has twenty-four hours to find Twiggy Kintsugi's heart -- and its meaning -- or his own will explode.

OMG!! This was such a sweet, funny read. Charlie and Shirley are very easy to connect with. It becomes a race to save Charlie's own heart as well as Twiggy. Very amusing and also touching and intense. Love The Ticking Heart.
10 stars.