Name: The Invisible Hour
Rating: 3.25 (10 reviews)
ISBN: 9781982175375

Alice Hoffman

An Atria Book. Atria Books has a great book for every reader.

A Novel

The Invisible Hour

Alice Hoffman is one of my favorite authors, and it almost pains me to give one of her books 1 star, so I’ll give this a 1.5. The Invisible Hour felt clunky with a major tone shift between Part 1 and Part 2. It tries to be too much at once. And the overt messaging was too over the top. I didn’t really like or resonate with the characters, and the time travel element was so confusing and not well done. It can be hard in my opinion for any piece of media to effectively pull off the time travel trope, with Outlander being the only exception. One reviewer said this book is basically Nathaniel Hawthorne fan fiction, and I couldn’t agree more. The romance didn’t feel authentic and the whole plot fell flat overall. The best part of this book, as with many of her novels, is Hoffman’s spellbinding magical realism and lyrical, poetic storytelling style. Overall very disappointing and I really can’t recommend. I listened as an audiobook; the narrator wasn’t bad at least.

Amanda

Ivy wants the choice to keep her child, so she leaves home and ends up in the Community, a commune in Massachusetts, and has her child, Mia. Ivy realizes that, rather than freedom, she's found a deeper form of bondage. But one day, her daughter Mia will discover the power of stories, choose to live, and leave the Community to find her own life.

Sounds great, right? It was...until the midway point when the novel turned into a time travel story in such a weird way. It was very jarring.

The writing was beautiful, and the atmosphere rich, but the story itself wasn't my favorite by Hoffman.

Cheri McElroy

Ivy wants the choice to keep her child, so she leaves home and ends up in the Community, a commune in Massachusetts, and has her child, Mia. Ivy realizes that, rather than freedom, she's found a deeper form of bondage. But one day, her daughter Mia will discover the power of stories, choose to live, and leave the Community to find her own life.

Sounds great, right? It was...until the midway point when the novel turned into a time travel story in such a weird way. It was very jarring.

The writing was beautiful, and the atmosphere rich, but the story itself wasn't my favorite by Hoffman.

Erik Wallace

Kimberly Masse

Paige Wanner

Kate Baldwin

ella hardy 

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and the Practical Magic series comes an enchanting novel about love, heartbreak, self-discovery, and the enduring magic of books. One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her? Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you. As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die? Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” This is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.

The Invisible Hour A Novel

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