ARC Review - How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

4 ✩✩✩✩



“Time is an illusion.” – Albert Einstein









How would you live your life if you could not age? We all wish we could live forever. Tom Hazard has been alive for centuries due to a rare condition. 

“Do not fall in love.” He was told. 

Through centuries Tom has been moving from town to town and has become tired of it. He moves back to London and becomes a history teach at a local high school. Because he has been alive so long he’s a perfect fit for the position as he can teach history by his memory, as he lived it. 

Throughout his life he has encountered a few historic people along the way. He performed with William Shakespeare, sailed the seas with Captain William Cook and had drinks with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has also loved and lost. 

In London he meets a French teacher, Camille, at the school where he works. This awakens in him something that has been asleep for hundreds of years. He must find the courage to fight for what he wants instead of being told how to live his life. He belongs to a secret society which pretty much has told him how to live his life. He is in constant fear of the future. 

This book is a wonderful reminder of how NOT to live your life. Living forever is not as appealing as it sounds. It will move you and help you see that time is only a word, and that our past is as close as our present. 

I truly enjoyed this book and the characters are memorable. I was afraid that it would be a confusing intricate story due to the fact that Tom has lived so long.  It was an easy plot to follow and throughout the story, I wanted to know what would happen next. The way the story is told reminded me a lot of Forrest Gump, with a bit of The Time Machine, though there is no time travel here. 

I enjoy historical fiction and this book took me to periods I never visited before and left me wanting more.