The Once and Future Me
by Melissa Pace
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted August 10, 2025
Buy from Bookshop or Amazon. A purchase through our links may earn us a commission.
Another debut novel provided as a digital review copy from Edelweiss. The Once and Future Me will publish next week, August 19. It is partly a psychological thriller, combined with time travel. Subtract the latter element and it could be compared to films like "The Snake Pit" or "Shock Corridor," but with time travel I couldn't help thinking of "12 Monkeys." The opening scene at first seems to be setting up an afterlife scenario; a dark tunnel with light up ahead, disorientation and anxiety. Then the first-person narrator wakes to find she is on a bus, but she has no idea where that bus is headed. It turns out to be the Hanover Psychiatric Hospital. On arrival, when the others are exiting the bus, the narrator realizes someone has taken her purse. There is a name tag on a chain around her neck. She cannot remember her name, but she doesn't think it is Dorothy Frasier. That must be the woman who stole her purse, switched name tags, then disappeared. She cannot convince anyone else that other woman, the real Dorothy Frasier, exists.
The narration is in present tense, which has always been hard for me to wrap my head around. Past tense is the person saying "this is what happened," but with present tense we are inside the head of the narrator, experiencing events along with them as they occur. And since the narrator doesn't know who she is or what is going on, it is just as confusing for the reader as it is for her. It is November of 1954, which is kind of odd based on the future scenario the time travel is supposed to be investigating, but I suspect the author chose it for the prevailing medical and psychiatric treatments used for "hysterical" women at that time. Since "Dorothy" doesn't know who she is or why she is there, we witness some of those treatments before the time travel element presents itself, but even then she thinks it is part of her delusion. She begins to welcome the treatments to restore her sanity. Hanover, the hospital, may be fictional, but the county or community is probably the one in Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington, DC. The future scenes take place in and around the DC area, including Georgetown University, and the real Dorothy Frasier, the one who was supposed to be in the hospital, frequently ran away to different places in that area and to Baltimore.
The narrator turns out to be Beatrix "Bix" Parrish, from the future of 2035. Her mission was to find someone who had knowledge of a virus, which through mutation and manipulation caused an outbreak that began in December 2025. Bix was supposed to appear as a new hospital staff member, but an error of the time machine landed her on the bus, and amnesia wiped any notion of why she was there, or any knowledge of the future. She later learns of a chip embedded in her wrist, but she also had a device in her purse, the one that was stolen. Since the real Dorothy had that device, why wasn't she the one retrieved into the future? Of course, she may have been, but we didn't witness it since Bix is the narrator. When Bix is pulled back to 2035 the people around her, none of whom she remembers, say anything about that, other than noting Bix doesn't have the device. HOW DID THEY BRING HER BACK TO THE FUTURE? That is even more puzzling when they reveal their base time machine has been stolen. When Bix learns of her mission, she still doesn't know if the person she seeks is a doctor, nurse, or other hospital personnel, or another patient.
I won't try to dissuade anyone from reading this, but I don't recommend it. There are too many clichés and familiar story elements, plus long info-dump passages toward the end, some of which could have been revealed earlier. Due to the present-tense narration, there was next to no character development. One exception was a sheriff's deputy whom Bix met on that first day at Hanover, who proved to be sympathetic and helpful. Perhaps that is why the author named him Worthy. Besides him, all of the narrative, and all the other characters, including Bix, were opaque.
We would appreciate your support for this site with your purchases from Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, and ReAnimusPress.
