Will I love Replay?

This book isn’t just my favorite time-travel novel—it’s my favorite book, period.

If Back to the Future is the gold standard for time travel storytelling, Replay is its literary counterpart. (And the two were released just six months apart!)

Grimwood takes the classic time loop premise and twists it into a moving, mind-bending exploration of identity, regret, and second chances.

Ever since my first read, I’ve spent many sleepless nights spiraling through my own infinite “what ifs”—imagining how I might change my own life if given the chance to relive it, how far future knowledge could take me, and whether… show more.

Primarily, I love this because of how it takes something that’s more than a trope, more of a culturally shared fantasy–who hasn’t daydreamed about living their life again, but with all the knowledge they have now?–and yet wrings an original, exquisitely-crafted story out of it.

I found it both narratively gripping and emotionally satisfying, a rare combination. And all from such an elemental premise. Apparently, he was writing a sequel when, like Replay’s protagonist, Grimwood died of a heart attack, so I like to think he’s alive again back in the sixties, finding a way to get that sequel written… show more.

If you could go back and change something about your life, would you?

The hero of this story inadvertently finds himself returning to his past time and again, each instance trying to follow a different path to success or happiness. But just as he finds what he thought he wanted, the cycle begins again. 

In Replay, a 43-year-old average Joe sustains a fatal heart attack and awakens in his college dorm as his 18-year-old self. Replay doesn’t have the same immediacy and gripping nature as typical time loop tropes since readers follow the protagonist through decades of his life rather than a single week or day, but I will forever be indebted to Ken Grimwood for introducing me to the concept of a dwindling time loop. Also, the book sparked deep feelings of wonder in me, making me contemplate my own life decisions, highlights, regrets, wasted time, and opportunities…and compelling me to hug… show more.

Replay is one of my all-time favourite books. It’s probably the book I’ve reread the most. I expect I’ll read it again one day. And the weird thing is every time I’ve read it, it’s been a slightly different book. Of course, it’s no doubt me that’s changed, not the book. Or… is it? Anyway, what if you could live your life over again? And again, and again? What would you do differently? Such an intriguing question is one of the many charms of this terrific book. Utterly gripping from start to finish, I may not wait, and go read… show more.

This book isn’t just my favorite time travel novel — it might be my favorite novel, period. Jeff Winston, in his forties and trapped in a miserable marriage, dies of a massive heart attack on page one. But don’t worry! By page four, Jeff has opened his eyes again, only to discover that he is in his own nineteen-year-old body, decades in the past, with the full memory of everything that will transpire in the interim. You think you know where this is headed, but you don’t — Grimwood’s tour de force contains a terrific twist on time travel that… show more.