"Lightbreakers" by Aja Gabel is an extraordinary novel that lingers in your mind long after the last page. Gabel weaves together profound human emotion and mind-bending scientific possibility, crafting a story that explores grief, love, and the tantalizing what-ifs of time itself. Noah’s journey through loss, hope, and impossible choices is deeply affecting, and the supporting characters—each with their own heartache and quiet strength—bring the story to life in vivid, unexpected ways.

What makes "Lightbreakers" truly remarkable is how it portrays grief not as a single experience, but as a constellation of emotions that can differ even among those mourning the same loss. The time travel elements elevate the stakes without overshadowing the intimate, tender moments that make the narrative resonate. Gabel’s prose is elegant and precise, balancing suspense, reflection, and moral complexity with effortless skill.

Reading this book is both exhilarating and heartbreaking. It challenges your understanding of love, loss, and the choices that define us, leaving you simultaneously breathless and moved. "Lightbreakers" is unforgettable—a masterful, emotionally rich exploration of life, death, and the paths in between.

This book explores themes of art, science, memory, grief, and love. It’s a wonderful piece of writing that had me at turns contemplative and on the edge of my seat. I would recommend it to science fiction lovers and literary fiction lovers. It’s great.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a beautiful novel about physics, time travel of sorts, acknowledging the past, and moving forward after tragedy. The characters are well-written and believable.

This is a beautifully written novel about love, time travel, and grief. Even though parts of it felt a little overwrought and over-detailed, I still thought the story was engaging and interesting. The author does a great job with telling a cohesive and poignant story. Lightbreakers is full of great emotional depth. I think a lot of readers will gravitate towards this lovely novel.

Lightbreakers is a story about a physicist named Noah who gets recruited to work on a project that hopes to make time-travel possible. Him and his artist wife, Maya, move to Marfa, TX so he can work on this project. Maya hopes for inspiration for her art, while Noah hopes to see his daughter who passed away as an infant. As Noah begins to work on this project, he becomes reacquainted with Ellen, his ex-wife who was the mother of his child. While Noah starts focusing on aspects of his past life, he starts neglecting his current life, and Maya takes a trip to her country of origin, Japan, and meets up with her ex-boyfriend. Noah and Maya deal with their past and present, and contemplate their life together.

Above everything else, Lightbreakers is a beautifully written book about grief, loss, and moving forward. There were many lines I loved like "The questions felt stuck insider her like a broken zipper" and "there were tears in his voice". Grief, wanting, fear, and confusion were tangible because of the prose. However, while the words were beautiful, the story felt underdeveloped. The first and last portions were engaging and interesting, while much of the middle fell flat. Many of the stakes felt unimportant because of this, and I wish the momentum from the first and last of the book was held throughout the story.

Overall I enjoyed this book, and rate it a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the ARC.

Lightbreakers was a treat to read: a novel about an experimental method of time travel reveals itself to be a tense yet tender exploration of grief, lives unlived, and the choices we make to live with ourselves. Gabel is a strong writer, particularly attuned to the intricacies of interiority. I was especially impressed by her assured, nuanced depictions of visual art (notoriously difficult to render in writing). That said, the writing sometimes felt heavy-handed, reiterating rather than evoking: Serena's death is mentioned four times in the first ten pages, metaphors of quantum entanglement recur too regularly, "electricity" marks multiple physical interactions. (My tiniest quibble: I have been plagued by the idea of "aubergine cabinets trimmed in yellow" for days now -- I really can't imagine why or how someone would choose this color scheme!)

I thought the book was good, not great. But, despite its minor flaws, I still think it will be a wistful, poignant read for anyone who has loved, lost, and wished they could do it differently.

Thanks to Netgalley and Riverhead for the ebook. Noah, a quantum physicist, finally feels that he’s come to a good place in his life with the help of Maya, his artist girlfriend. Then a billionaire recruits them to Marfa, Texas, where she can work on a new art project and Noah is seduced into joining an experimental project that has the possibility of traveling back in time. No matter how improbable and dangerous the project might seem to be, the mere chance of going back and trying to see, and maybe save, his daughter Serena, who passed away one night suddenly, years ago is worth everything to Noah. Great novel of obsession and head spinning scientific possibilities.

This novel is a complicated look at past love, current love and dreams of changing the past.

Maya, an artist, and Noah, a quantum physicist, are married but Noah is privately grieving the loss of his child from his previous marriage. When Noah gets a chance to take part in a scientific experiment traveling back in time, he decides to attempt to change the fate of his child. Through this experiment, his ex-wife, Eileen, becomes a part of his journey which draws the two close again. Maya, feeling rejected and confused, turns to her ex-lover, Ren, who is also an artist.

This novel was well written and each chapter focused on a different character and their perspective which made this an easy and enjoyable to read. The characters made bad decisions and were not flawless, but seeing their struggles brought to light why they were making such bad decisions.

Thank you NetGalley and Riverhead Publishing for the Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review. #NetGalley #Lightbreakers #Riverhead @Riverhead

Thank you so much to NetGalley for providing an E-ARC for this novel
NOTE: All opinions shared are my own.

Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel is set to release on November 4th, 2025.

WOW. This book was genuinely amazing. I put it down 20 minutes ago, and I still have the same stupid look on my face from when I first finished it. This book explores grief, lost relationships, and what it means to lose a child. I truly felt for every character in this book and what they were going through. The pacing was perfect for the story Gabel is telling, so please keep reading even if the pace isn’t super fast.

This book deals with the topic of time travel and the personal ethics of traveling back to a time that you can’t change. I think this book serves as such an amazing topic for discussion. I still can't wrap my brain around everything this book did for me.

Grief is handled beautifully in this book. It shows two characters going through extreme grief, and how even if two people are grieving from the same loss, they can’t grieve on the same terms as one another. I LOVED this book for the complicated feelings both characters (Noah and Eileen) had with the loss of their daughter. I also felt for Maya, who just wanted to be let in but understood that it wasn’t her place.

I have so much more to say, but I will leave it here. Easy 5-star read.

Again, thank you so much NetGalley for providing this ARC!

I really liked the idea and themes of this book while the plot was a bit meandering. By exploring grief, love, and time, the author created beautiful prose and attempted to put to words some of life’s most difficult experiences. I also loved the themes of science and art and how they’re interrelated to life. Overall, I just don’t feel like the execution quite worked out for me, but I still really enjoyed this book.

Lightbreakers was bright, touching, introspective, and thoughtful. It had some eerie elements to it as well. I really love the way grief was explored— how Noah couldn’t move on from it, how Maya struggled to reach into it, and how Eileen pushed it down to try to live in spite of it. I enjoyed the differing perspectives on the same art, the same memories, the same experiences. It was such an excellent reminder that we all see the world in different ways, and we need each other to help us remember how vast and beautiful life can be. Our own perspective can be so limiting on its own.

The writing was really lovely. I related to all three main characters in their search to be seen and known, but I really appreciated Eileen the most. I think what I loved was her perspective on motherhood and what it meant to her at that point in her life. It was so touching, and I feel like I’m still lingering in the story.

Lightbreakers reminded me a lot of Blake Crouch (with a little less suspense lol) and Emily St. John Mandel. I would definitely recommend it if you like books like Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility!

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this novel. I loved it and will definitely be recommending it!

Lightbreakers is beautiful and thoughtfully written. I was interested in the time travel plot, but I didn't feel especially drawn to either of the main characters. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

The main story dragged a little in places, but for me this was worth reading just for the setting—endless references to contemporary art and the artists making it, each more satisfying than the last.

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This book felt like a black hole; it was all I could think about while reading it. I sucked in all my conceptions of past, present, future, love, loss, and grief and spit them out the other side with a better appreciation for change and all that comes with it.

There are parts of Lightbreakers that I adored, and there are parts that were so over my head I had to skip around. There’s no doubt this is well-written and thought out, but I don’t always care for time travel plots. I do appreciate the ARC from NetGalley.