ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS has many five-star reviews. Perhaps that’s because the writing style and the first-person narrator’s voice are so engaging. I enjoyed reading this in large part because of Mastai’s writing; it reminds me of Harlan Coben’s style.

But I disagree that ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS is worthy of five stars. Why?

You could say the first third of the book is downright boring. It is at least putdownable. The second third, however, is much better. So I had high expectations of the last third. But it is "eh"—except for the narrator, Tom. I loved him.

Tom claims that ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS is not a novel but a memoir of his experience traveling to an alternate 2016. He claims that the 2016 he comes from is the right one and the alternate, our 2016, is wrong.

So Tom attempts to convince us of this by, first, describing the right 2016. It doesn’t sound that great to me except the part about no war. But he never adequately explains why a machine that generates lots of energy leads to peace all over the world. This is one of several questions I have about this book that are not adequately explained.

Could it be that Tom thinks his first 2016 is the superior one because it is the first one? The first anything seen as the best is one of the many subjects he ponders.

But the alternate 2016, the one we live in, is the 2016 that Tom is happiest in even though he sees it as the wrong 2016, full of corruption, wars, dirty politics, etc. So another quandary: is it fair, he wonders, that the world is stuck with the wrong 2016 when he has the power to switch back to the right 2016?

This isn’t a bad book. But its putdownable beginning and the unanswered questions I have about the story downgrade its rating from five to three stars. But I give it four stars because it will generate lots of discussion in book groups.