Review: Future Proof

Future Proof by David Atkinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm a sucker for a time travel novel (unless it involves kilts) so when I saw this on Kindle Unlimited I was intrigued.

Sam Harris has probably reached the lowest point in his life. Over forty, overweight, being evicted from his grotty flat, single, unemployed. His social worker however has got him a place on a six week in-house experimental mental health treatment. During the treatment the doctors will attempt to reset his genome through drug therapy combined with the more traditional therapy therapy (for want of a better description). However, when Sam is given the injections they take him back in time to traumatic incidents from his past, looking at events from the point of view of a forty-year old man gives him better coping mechanisms/the tools to change things - so on his first 'journey' he stands up to three little boys who bullied and humiliated him, he was able to articulate the bullying to the head teacher and point out the fallacy in one father's argument when he attempted to claim it wasn't bullying but a game/accident. When Sam awakes only three hours have elapsed in the present, but he is miraculously seven stone lighter. No one else sees any difference in Sam's appearance, his actions in the past have changed the future.

Each treatment addresses a different event from Sam's past, a trauma, or a deep regret and the treatment allows him to fix his mistakes, confront the bully, invest in tech stocks, etc.

This has elements of the film The Butterfly Effect, it also sort of reminded me of the film About Time - probably now I think about it, because both involve time travelling within the individual's own lifetime rather than back to Victorian times or the Dark Ages.

Anyway, it was different, and funny, and clever, and a love story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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