In Any Lifetime: A Novel

3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars | 6,170 ratings

Price: 4.99

Last update: 01-08-2025


About this item

A devoted husband defies fate and risks everything to find the one universe where his beloved wife is still alive in this bold and thought-provoking novel.

Dr. Jonas Cullen has spent his career as a groundbreaking physicist defying the odds. But on the best night of his life—the night his wife, Amanda, tells him they’re finally having a baby—everything is taken away when a tragic car accident claims the lives of Amanda and their unborn child.

Gutted by pain, Jonas sets out to find a way to bring back Amanda—or rather, find a parallel universe in which she’s still alive. But that’s easier said than done. As Jonas comes to understand all too well, the universe favors certain outcomes…and Amanda’s death is one of them.

Guggenheim’s novel takes readers on a suspenseful journey, intercutting scenes of Jonas’s frantic, present-day search across multiple realities with glimpses from the past of his unfolding romance and eventual marriage. Will Jonas and Amanda reunite in some other world, or will fate succeed in taking her from him forever?


From the Publisher

THE LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE NO MATCH FOR LOVE

Top reviews from the United States

  • Deborah I.
    5.0 out of 5 stars WOW
    Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2024
    Where to begin? This story twisted my head into a knot over and over again! Although a mind boggling premise I couldn't put it down. It read like the most action packed movie you'll ever see. Just when it seems it can't get worse for Jonas it does. Interjected in between exciting chapters are sensitive, emotional times for the characters and then WHAM, off and running again! I had to Google the author and when I did it made sense why he writes so well and imaginatively. His resume is pretty impressive. I would highly recommend this book. Even though it's clearly fiction, it leaves one wondering about the possibilities being " real" even though wrapping one's head around them ( for ME anyway) feels impossible.... almost.
  • Dave
    4.0 out of 5 stars Fun action/romance book with some scifi elements
    Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2024
    Interesting premise, but some sections are just too long and detailed (being told exactly what people are thinking), while others (towards the end) haves days pass in mere paragraphs.

    I personally got frustrated with each flashback as it slowed down the story. The characters are well fleshed out albeit the villain is predictable. This book is more action and romance than science fiction. The science fiction elements are simply to move the story forward.

    As someone who loves hard science fiction, I could see a lot of scientific issues that I ignored while reading this book -- a vertical particle accelerator in an earthquake zone?!

    The action scenes were surprisingly well written and I could easily understand the fight scenes -- an area where most writers do poorly but not here.

    The ending was both good and bad. The good (an expected ending turns out to have many unexpected twists and turns) and the bad (too many unexplained dead bodies that NYPD just seems to ignore).

    A minor quibble: the title is so generic that I can never remember it.

    Ultimately the book could have been improved, lots of the redundancy removed, but still a good book that is not too deep and fun to read.
  • MtnGal
    3.0 out of 5 stars Too Many Lifetimes
    Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2024
    I stuck with this book until the end, which I won’t always do. But it was very repetitive, to the point of being confusing. An interesting idea played with, tough to write, and worth the effort.
  • mountainside
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fun multiverse love story
    Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2025
    Filled with enough science to be interesting, action, love story. It’s fun and held my interest all the way through.
  • Book Lover
    4.0 out of 5 stars Much better than Dark Matter
    Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2024
    Stories about time travel and parallel worlds are having their moment right now. I confess I love the unlimited possibilities these concepts offer. I dove into the Apple TV series Dark Matter but found it raised more questions than it answered and in some ways it was downright silly.
    In Any Lifetime addressed the same concepts but presented them in a more logical and entertaining manner. Like the tv series, this is a story about a man trying to get back to his wife, the love of his life, after traveling through the multiverse. , In the series the story is fragmented among many variations of the main character and the most sympathetic version is rather passive. His nemesis is anctually one of the other versions of himself. In this book Jonas Cullen is a Nobel Laureate who uses his knowledge of parallel worlds to actively try to set right the tragedy of his wife’s death. The villain in this story is a rival scientist who accuses him of stealing his work.
    Did I understand the science underpinning the plot? Since this is all theoretical, you might say, I understood enough to go along for the ride. Having text rather than visuals to refer to made the story easier to follow and having a clearly defined enemy made a more enjoyable conflict.
    So if you are into the intriguing idea of other worlds, I recommend this. I just wouldn’t worry about the science behind the story.
  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fast-paced Read
    Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2024
    With any book about traveling through the multiverse, you have to suspend reality, but if you can do that this is a fast-paced well-written book. It’s almost an experience rather than a novel. It reads very quickly and you can imagine it being an interesting movie. Overall a thumbs up!
  • WAG
    3.0 out of 5 stars Some great ideas but to repetitive till the end.
    Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2024
    The author created a good story with an excellent premise but the repeated episodes made the story a bit boring.
  • njoynlife
    4.0 out of 5 stars interesting
    Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2024
    I really liked this book. It was a bit repetitive at times, but overall a good read! It definitely makes you think about a multiverse world.

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