First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Author: Claire North
Pages: 417
Genre: Historical Fiction
First Published: April 2014
Book Description (from Good Reads): Some stories cannot be told in just one lifetime. Harry August is on his deathbed. Again.No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.
Until now.
As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August," she says. "I need to send a message."
This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

• Characters: 7.5
• Complex people after all they have lived for centuries. Yet they are still frivolous and with god complexes most of them. 
• August is hard to determine if he's a good person or not, a morally gray character. He is a very smart person with an amazing memory.  You end up cheering for him anyway.
• Victor and Simon ;) like the other bad guys are not really explored and their deeds while bad enough to merit being described for most of the book well as characters they are not overly explored and you never seem any growth in them but oh well they are the bad guys they probably never saw and never would have seen the error of their ways.
• It is told from Harry's perspective and only his life is really explored so you do not get to see anything other than pretty much the interactions the others have with him so most is unknown about their own lives. But they do not seem to have any other purpose or be remarkable in any way other than to be useful to Harry at some point or another.
• Plot: 8.0
• It is mostly confusing because while it has a dual purpose to tell the lives of Harry as he goes discovering the end of the world is coming, well they jump around getting retelling of one live then jumping to the next before coming back to the one that was being told initially. It does get confusing especially in the first half of the book. Because of it you never know if the plot is moving forward or not because it does not seem to have a clear time line to move in. 
• It has several reveals, you do not seem them coming simply because there are not enough clues for you to put the picture together, most of the data is missing from Harry's retelling. You need to wait for the facts to be discovered and/or told to Harry. 
• Writing Style: 6.5
• While the story was very intriguing from the very first few lines, the way it kept jumping timeline to timeline going from one lifetime to the next ad then going back, it was very confusing. I personally dislike the lack of continuity in this story. There were passages of his life where you were simply waiting for the story to move forward because you are not sure if the things being told are relevant later on or you read through them waiting for the relevance to appear. Still the constant change in timelines was the one negative point since the beginning. You do get used to it and after the first half of the book either that or because the story gets more interesting you overlook that detail. 
• Intrigue: 7.5
• The mystery is presented from the very beginning yet you do not feel it until after passing half way through the story. the very first few chapters do not engage or show much inclination or thought to the troubling message being passed down warning against the end of the world. 
• After the meting with Simon, :p yes I picked that one name specifically you will get it after you read the book. Well after Simon and his revolutionary ideas well that's where the intrigue begins because finally the negative effects come to the eyes of Harry. their cat - mouse chase was very engaging. This part had me guessing and just waiting for the next big reveal.
• Logic: 8.0
• For the most part it makes sense the people and the world's corruption, especially if you consider that the main issue here were the bad decisions people took because they did not care about the consequences of changing history. Why? because if they got it wrong they could try again from scratch. But the world started to change after some of the decisions taken, but not always for the better, the good and the bad go hand in hand here. 
• Everything bad that came for trying to make the world a better place, that was a lie the only thing people wanted was to have an impact on the whole rather than live life after life and never make a dent in history at all. It was greed, greed and god complex of humans that ended up being the main drivers of the story.
• Intention: 7.5
• No matter what be it: Good intentions, bettering the world, saving human kind, whatever, altering the course of time never ends up well.
• Another main lesson to be learned, power corrupts, always. Just because you can "skip" the bad consequences and start over again it does not mean it was the right thing to do. 
• If the intention though was to confuse for the majority of the tale, then I will change that to 10 XD 
• Enjoyment: 7.75 mixed feelings really, there were parts where I was very into the story but then it went all over the place in the retelling that threw me off again.

Total score: 52.75

Average: 7.5

Star Rating: 3.0

This book was not taken for any challenge of readathons this month. It was simply chosen because we needed a new audiobook and this one came up. After all, it is not every day that you find a Historical fiction/Time travel story. It was a nice combination.