Anytime I see a new book pop up with a time travel theme, I'm automatically excited to read it. I'm a bit obsessed with time travel, and frankly, there isn't enough out there to whet my voracious appetite for it. Let me start off by saying that Cassandra in Reverse started off with a bang.

Well that was a surprise. I really thought after the first chapter or so that I was really going to get irritated or Cassandra was going to get on my nerves but instead I quit trying to read it a bit at a time and read the last half in one go. A thoroughly enjoyable read. So when she gets dumped, fired AND her local café runs out of banana muffins - all in one day - it feels like the end of the world. Cassandra] is smart and often funny, and her chaotic attempts to set the world to rights are poignantly rendered' THE TIMES

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Deeply human, wildly original, and gut-warmingly funny. Holly Smale is a GENIUS." - Emma Jane Unsworth About Time meets The Rosie Project: A unique, heartwarming and life-affirming novel about one woman's unlikely journey through love, again and again... Eisenstein, L., 'The Cassandra Complex', pp. 37–41 in Haring-Smith, T., New Monologues For Women By Women – Vol II (2005)

In 1963, psychoanalyst Melanie Klein provided an interpretation of Cassandra as representing the human moral conscience whose main task is to issue warnings. Cassandra as moral conscience, "predicts ill to come and warns that punishment will follow and grief arise." [3] Cassandra's need to point out moral infringements and subsequent social consequences is driven by what Klein calls "the destructive influences of the cruel super-ego," which is represented in the Greek myth by the god Apollo, Cassandra's overlord and persecutor. [4] Klein's use of the metaphor centers on the moral nature of certain predictions, which tends to evoke in others "a refusal to believe what at the same time they know to be true, and expresses the universal tendency toward denial, [with] denial being a potent defence against persecutory anxiety and guilt." [3] Laurie Layton Schapira [ edit ] A brilliantly clever, twisty story that dazzles with its wit whilst touching our hearts." - Sarah Haywood I’ve just put this book down and I’m genuinely sad, angry and frustrated. This was possibly my most anticipated release of the year and it was a huge letdown. Smale [] combines well-developed characters with laugh-out-loud humor….Readers will be drawn into Cassie’s life and won’t want to leave. This neurodiverse tale is ripe for discussion.” —BOOKLIST, Starred Review

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i don’t have much else to say, so here are some quotes i loved! (there may be some very very minor spoilers) This is a science fiction novel of enormous scope, filled with wonders. Set earlier in the same "future history" as Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality, and The Fountains of Youth, The Cassandra Complex is the independent story of events crucial to the creation of the universe in which the others take place. It is the twenty-first century, a world of rapid change and biotech threats and promises. World War Three, the biotech war, is on the horizon and the world as we know it is going to end. The fateful question is, who is going to choose the kind of future that will follow, and who gets to live in this new world to come? After getting dumped by her boyfriend and fired from her PR job in the same day, Cassandra Dankworth miraculously gains the ability to manipulate time from the past four months. And she'll do anything to fix her mistakes! Laurie Layton Schapira, The Cassandra Complex: Living With Disbelief: A Modern Perspective on Hysteria p.10 (1988)