I’m the kind of woman who needs to talk about her feelings immediately even if I haven’t fully sat with them or processed them. This Is How You Lose the Time War hit me super hard and in therapy today I talked about just a tiny portion of what it brought up for me. I’ve been trying to write a spoiler-free blog post about what this book did to me but it’s proving impossible right now. It is simultaneously exactly the book I needed to read right now and exactly the book I should not have read right now.

Time War is the kind of story tailor made for anyone who experiences that deep longing for another’s heart and all the grief and hope that come with that. For anyone who experiences undying love, especially for someone they can’t have. It’s short but a little heavy on the prose at times, so much so that even my longcovid brain struggled with it sometimes. I am glad I pushed through though. I highly recommend reading it.

I guess all I can really say at this time is that I am undone. I feel bare and seen for all that I am, for all that I hope.

I had intended to slip some quotes from the book into my post, but quickly realized that even without spoilers of the story beats it would enter spoilers of the emotional experience of the two women. There was so much of the story that just hit me perfectly. I guess until I can put my words together I will leave this singular quote:

“I don’t know what this means. This feels like being cut off, again, in the strangest way—feels like teetering on the brink of something that will unmake me.”