Book Review: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

I've always loved time travel. It's one of my favorite genres. Right up there with apocalyptic and coming of age stories. If you just read the title, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August you could probably see why I picked this one up. The book itself follows (you guessed it) Harry August a man who re-lives his same life over and over again.

Think about the premise of Groundhog Day but instead of reliving the same day you relive the entire life. Everything from birth to death. After his first life is where things get interesting. He spends his second life in a mental hospital not sure how to deal with reliving a life over again. From there he gets a grasp on the fact that he will be reliving his life and begins his journey through centuries of living. There's an interesting story arch with a group of people who band together who too live their lives over and over again. From there you see how others are dealing with reliving their lives over and over again. 

Without going into spoilers (which I'm dangerously close to doing) I will say that the group of folks run into some issues and Harry is put in some interesting situations. I kind of wish it didn't turn to a mystery/action book and just stuck with learning about his first fifteen lives. To me the way he changed throughout the novel was far more fascinating then the sub plots in the book. Claire North also had a tendency to jump around Harry's lives which got confusing. 

Although not perfect, I still thoroughly enjoyed The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. I am curious if there will be The Second Fifteen Lives of Harry August, that might be really interesting. For me though there were some faults  that held it back from being one of my favorites of the year.