I loved the concept of this book. Who hasn't felt alienated at times, or been dropped by a friend you thought was someone who would be in your life forever? Plus, time travel? Sign me up!

It's definitely YA, and I'm no longer a youth myself so I can't say this for certain, but there were parts that felt like that scene in 30 Rock where Steve Buscemi wanders by with a skateboard and says "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?" Like, in my experience as a teen and now as an adult who occasionally interacts with teens, they aren't as shallow and stupid as slang or the media can make it seem. There were just a few jarring parts where the main character's inner monologue would be so insipid as she talked about her crush or her friends or love of math, RIGHT before she goes on to program her phone to travel through time. It just didn't ring true and took me out of the book more often than I would have liked.

Overall, the characters felt really two dimensional and the whole plot just didn't hold up to its potential. Whole years can take multiple chapters or a single paragraph, so you don't get the sense as a reader that time has passed and that Fi has grown emotionally. It feels like after a decade of trying, wouldn't Fi have made at least one other friend? Like, yes she's weird but even weird kids have friends. I also don't love that the friends she finally does make fall in her lap while she actively tries to push them away. I feel like there's a way to have a year or two of angst and throwing things away, but that to make friends or have any kind of relationship you need to learn to put yourself out there.

Still, it was a fun read where you keep hoping she does learn how to be okay with being yourself and putting yourself out there, and there's time travel, angst, and some PG-13 romance. Great for when you just need a quick escape!

I've said it before, I'll say it again,this is one of my favourite tropes. apps and time travel using modern tech is such a good trope.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

The synopsis of this sounded so so cute, but the story just didn't follow through for me.

More so it was the writing rather than the plot! It was just very awkward and the bullying and how the MC talked about herself, and her body made me extremely uncomfortable, and it made it a struggle to get through the book.

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book had an amazing plot, but I felt the characters were a bit hard to connect to.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

This book contained a unquie story of a freshman in high school thinking they are looking ahead to three more rough and lonely years when their best friend is no longer with them however all of that changes quickly when they invent time travel. This was so fun! I loved the time travel element and the invention of it!

I thought it was going to be a sci-fi romp, but it ended up being mainly about it taking one girl a much longer than average amount of time to get over middle school. In fairness, we've maybe all had trouble letting go of the trauma of middle school.

"When Nephele has a terrible freshman year, she does the only logical thing for a math prodigy like herself: she invents a time travel app so she can go back and do it again (and again, and again)."

This book is quirky, fun, and interesting. It's not my normal genre, but I appreciated the story and thought the mathematical additions made the story unique and complex.

First sentence: The day my best friend, Vera Knight, dumped me, I didn't know what happened.

Premise/plot: Nephele Weather, our fourteen year old heroine, has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. And it all starts when her father hands her a self-published book, time Travel for Love and Profit.

Nephele decides to invent a time machine so she can redo her freshman year of high school. No problem, right? How hard could designing an app to allow for time travel be? She's smart after all. That's part of the "problem" as she sees it. She doesn't fit in with the other kids because she's so super-aggressively-weird. If she can just relive her freshman year only cooler and better then surely her life will be better, right?!

Long story short--and I don't feel bad spoiling because anything in the jacket copy is fair game--she loops (alone) TEN TIMES through her entire freshman year. Each year she spends dedicated almost exclusively to fixing the bugs and flaws in her program, Dirk Angus. One of the program's main flaws is that it is destroying her parents' brains--so there's that. Her parents are literally the only people in the world that retain any sort of memory of her.

Will Nephele ever grow up?

My thoughts: I wanted to love this one. I love time travel stories. The premise sounds reasonably entertaining. I imagined a time loop via Groundhog's Day or Window of Opportunity (Stargate) or even Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. She's not struggling to get out of the loop--she's purposefully looping even though she sees the damaging effects it is having on her parents. And here's the thing, looping isn't making her happier. It's not. If her mission was to have a better life, it's failing in every sense of the word. But she's stubborn and persistent that even though I've tried before and failed, this next time will be different.

It is very much a premise driven novel.

Nephele was not a likeable person (in my opinion). My personal observation is that what time she did spend reading, she spent reading the wrong books. If she'd read better books, I'm not sure she'd have had to loop ten times. I'm not sure she'd even have looped once. Because books can ground you. If she'd read even a handful of MG or YA books, she'd have learned everything she needed to know to face her sophomore year the first time. She'd have known that she would find her people--even if took a while. She would have realized that there is life outside of high school. She'd have learned that some things just don't matter in the long run. She could have spent her time learning to love herself.

I do think it is thought-provoking in a way. It could have gone many different ways. For example, she could have wanted to time travel to post-high school. To avoid the stresses of high school altogether. She really should have thought of *aging* in terms of time travel as well. But no matter what she chose to do with the app--I think she was destined to fail. Because every loop was proof that she didn't love herself--or her life--the way it was.

The ending. I am NOT happy with the ending.


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I do NOT trust the new evolved APP. I don't. And I'm almost mad at Jazz (aka Jeremiah) for encouraging her to give the AI a "soul." The book ventured into horror there at the end...and I think our main character is clueless and doesn't realize it.

The story started with a pretty big info dump that made it difficult to connect with the MC. Ended up DNFing.

While I am a connoisseur of time travel novels, I couldn't get past the archaic middle grade writing to make it to the time travel portion. The writing started off as both clunky and basic, leaving little for the reader to imagine with its lack of detail. I had high hopes for the time travel portion of this novel, but the writing got in the way of that. Furthermore, the characters felt awfully bland and flat.
I personally feel not that far removed from my teen years but the language used by the teens throughout this book felt particularly juvenile and difficult to read. Unfortunately, this was not the one for me, time travel passion aside.

Time Travel for Love and Profit by Sarah Lariviere is a wonderfully strange sci-fi YA book that many readers will love. Some readers will perhaps be a bit discombobulated by it though.

It's a book of time travel and first loves and finding a place to belong. Nephele, or Fi, is a math genius and invents time travel as a means to make high school better. A bit of a time loop, however, means things don't go quite to plan. Upside: you can learn from a lot of mistakes in ten years. Downside: ten years of being a frosh.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

I wanted to love Time Travel for Love and Profit so much, and I really, really didn’t. It sounded so promising: A teen who’s been abandoned by her best friend in 9th grade discovers a book that tells her how to travel back and time — when she does, she can get a big redo and not do all the goofy, nerdy things that cost her her best-friendship. But it doesn’t work out quite how she expected: Nephele does indeed jump back in time, but she’s stuck repeating the same year over and over again while everyone else in her life moves on. Nephele does 9th grade over and over while the people she knows graduate, head off to college, and generally move on with their lives. By the time she’s started 9th grade ten times, her teacher is one of her old classmates, and maybe she’s finally figuring out how to make friends at last.

I think any “Smart Kid” will appreciate Nephele’s struggles to feel at home in the world of high school, and plenty of us have had to navigate the end of an important friendship, so it doesn’t seem at all strange that when math-minded Nephele finds a time loophole, she wants to take advantage of it. Of course, I’m just assuming Nephele’s experiences because the book never describes them — we never see Nephele’s friendship breakup or see her and Vera actually being friends. And when she realizes that she’s stuck while everyone else is moving on — so there’s no way to “fix” what happened with her friendship and the longer she repeats 9th grade, the less opportunity she has to ever connect with the people she went back in time to connect with in the first place — she doesn’t seem particularly bothered. There’s also the problem of her parents, who are increasingly confused and harmed by Nephele’s actions since the “time travel magic” has to adjust their memories every year to keep Nephele 14 years old while time passes regularly for them. By the time the story reaches its climax, Nephele is essentially a 24-year-old 14-year-old, and so it seems gross rather than romantic that she forges a bond with a 14-year-old boy who will finally help her break the cycle. And no spoilers, but the way she chooses to break the cycle is even grosser — and more selfish.

I sympathized with Nephele at the beginning; by the end, I didn’t like her at all. I wanted to like this so much, but it’s a hard no for me.

Time Travel for Love & Profit was a strange book.

I considered stopping a lot of times but curiosity got the best of me.
I did skim through a lot of it though.
I found it to be confusing no matter how much I kept reading.
The concept of this book is something I’m really interested in which is why I picked this up.

I was not a fan of the characters. We mostly only hear our main character inner monologue and she was so odd that I felt lost half the time. The rest of the characters felt very robotic.

The writing I did enjoy and it’s what made it easier to keep reading.

Overall I was disappointed in this novel.

Time Travel for Love and Profit is undeniable a fairly odd book, but this isn't a bad thing. It can be hard to pull of the Groundhog Day time-loop scenario, and even more so when it's a voluntary time loop, but Lariviere manages to do so in a quirky, fun way.

Nephele wasn't necessarily the easiest character to like, but there were so many parts of her that were very relatable, especially towards the end. Her penchant for maths and awkwardness around other people were well shown, and very much fit with that particular type of driven, 'smart' teenager that she was written to be. She grows a lot over the course of a book, which is to be expected considering she ages ten years, but she's still the young teenager that she actually is, and this balancing of learning valuable lessons with still being at this phase of her life was done very well. A lot of her development is through her relationships with those around her, with her experiencing losses but also gains, which gives her much needed perspective as the seeds for her growth. By the end of the book, you're with her on the journey, and I ended up liking her a lot as a main character.

Though it takes place over a time span of ten years, it never actually felt like that, and this is where I had the most issue. A number of these years are skipped - which makes sense, considering following Nephele through ten freshman years would be tedious - but I questioned why she felt the need to keep going back over and over again, even when she learned more about the consequences. This middle section was a slower read than the rest because of this, but the beginning and end were strong in terms of pacing. I thought the latter third was especially good; there's a sense of finality to her last trip, because of the impact we see, but the introduction of interpersonal relationships, and the changing nature of what she thought was a given, help bring the stakes up. The ending was a particularly satisfying one, keeping with the character development we saw from Nephele, and though it doesn't quite tie everything up, this

On a science-y tangent, the explanation for the time travel was good in that it wasn't overly complicated, but the science part of my brain did have some nitpicks for the actual reasoning behind it. Even though Nephele was years ahead of her peers (pun intended) in terms of mathematical prowess, her time travel explanation was accessible to those who may not be familiar with complex mathematical concepts, and this really help keep the tone of the book fun and not a massive scientific tome. This is perhaps why the idea felt slightly more fantastic than scientific, but I also can't fault the author for this as we currently have very little idea how time travel would actually work. It plays a large role in the story, but never felt too bulky in its explanations, and overall I thought it was a good solution to a plot element that could have been overwhelming.

This was a book that I enjoyed reading, and though it did have some parts I found slightly shaky, I would still recommend it. The blend of contemporary coming of age and science fiction, with an examination of what time travel actually means for the traveller, it's a fresh and unique addition to the young adult age range.

I really enjoyed the concept of this book and the quality of the writing. However, I had difficulty with the time travel mechanics. It made the plot confusing and difficult to keep up with. The characters aren't fully fleshed out either.

3 stars = Good/solid/fine

This was both good and disappointing for me at the same time. I was fully invested in Nephele's journey to break her time loop. And I liked that the author's version of the time loop was creative and different - and there were fascinating consequences for those differences. This piece of the story was incredibly well crafted.

But I was disappointed with how the author chose to end the story. And it's her story to do with as she chooses - I don't fault her for that. But what I wanted for this story and for these characters didn't happen, and that left me disgruntled. The story was engaging, but not satisfying for me. I will own the fact that I am considerably older than the target audience, and that could impact my enjoyment of how the story played out. I would hand this to YA readers without reservation - I'm curious if they would be more satisfied with the wrap up than I was.

4.5 stars.

This book has NOT gotten enough hype. It is a lovely quirky YA sci-fi that still manages to feel a bit like a YA contemporary. The approach to time travel and the feel of a teenage Groundhog Day was wonderful and entertaining. I loved this story and found it to be super cute.

The writing is quippy and comfortable, it just has a lilting and happy feel to it. Almost jaunty. It's fantastic and make me just fly through my read. It was nearly a conversational feel and I really enjoyed it. The plot was well structured, but did have a bit of a drag to it in the middle. For me that wasn't an issue because I was already invested pretty well in Fi's journey, but some readers who don't connect as quickly to the main character may have a little trouble pushing through certain sections.

The characters are great. Nephele (Fi) is a brilliant young girl with anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. You know...teenage angsty kind of stuff. She feels real and is just super lovable. Her character arc through the narrative is great and I really enjoyed watching her go through so many trials and discovering pieces about herself. The character development and her dynamic nature just made Fi a character that I would like to wrap up in a hug. She's wonderful.

The other characters are good, but Fi clearly shines. Her relationship with Jazz is the cutest friendship and I just loved the way he slowly weaved his way into her life. I also appreciated that Fi's parents were both present, written in a supportive way, and that she had a relationship with them that wasn't constantly at odds. This seems to be rare in YA reads. I will say that these characters were not developed quite as strongly and the parents did feel a bit wispy.

This book was perfect for me at the time I read it. Adorable, uplifting, rewarding, and just a good all around experience.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. *

I was super excited to read about a math genius after having just finished The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-Kiss. While this book is for a younger age (14 versus 17/18), I think it compares really well. Nephele has an idea, and is determined to make it happen. That idea just happens to be going back in time one year to fix her life. No biggie.

The writing is beautiful, with such vivid details/descriptions that you fall into the story. I love Nephele and how her personality screams off the page.

I'm super torn on how I feel about this book. I love stories about time travel and time loops, so the blurb had me sold. Nephele has created a time machine so that she could have a do-over of her freshman year - and it worked, kind of.

The problem is what Nephele has created isn't time travel. She's NOT going back in time, per se. Instead she's jumping back into her 14yo self and repeating her freshman year - while everyone else around her moves on every year and ages, Initially, I worked way to hard to figure out how this works, and I finally had to roll with it to see where the story goes.

Now, this should quickly prove problematic for her parents as she perpetually repeats freshman year, never aging, but this weird thing that Nephele has created awkwardly resolves this plot hole, and so it becomes another reason for Nephele to try to travel back to her original 14 yo self.

The book jumps in and a little too far ahead - not explaining what happened with her friends to prompt her to build such a device in the first place. In fact, she's already repeated a freshman year when we find her getting ready to jump back again. I don't feel like I ever got a good grasp of the WHY of her actions. And don't rest too long on the how, because you just need to believe she can program all this on her iPhone.

And yet...even though the characters in her 10th jump are truly out there and more than a little unrelatable at times, there's something about the story that, halfway through, had me throwing all longing for understanding of the physics and the mechanics of the thing so I could enjoy the story.

Honestly, the story is weird, the iPhone app is weird, and there are SO many issues with the plot that I should have absolutely hated it, but there is something charming and fun and hopeful about the story. You just need to suspend disbelief for this one to work for you.

I'm giving this one 3-1/2 stars. What it lacks in execution it makes up for in weirdness, fun, and something I can't put my finger on but ultimately enjoyed.