I can't deny this one thing. Mitch Albom is an utter genius. I mean, who else besides Nick Sparks could create such heart-felt saccharine fables and feed them to the public, time after time, having each one surge up the best sellers list despite the fact that we've already bought this story time and time before, although each time with a slightly different cover and hero, right? 
 Although I had a particularly negative experience with THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN, I still couldn't miss out on the chance to grab this e-galley from Netgalley to give ole Mitch Albom another fair and fighting chance. The cover is beautiful and I have a particular weakness for the over-philosophizing of time, so it definitely couldn't hurt to give myself an exercise in attempting to remain fair and unbiased with as much of a open-mind as I could conjour after my last literary nightmare. 
 If you're not familiar with THE TIME KEEPER, it's the story of Father Time, a man previously known as Dor who lived a simple, carefree life until his aimless hobby of randomly quantifying the world around him evolved into the conceptualization of time through the creation of the first clock. By giving man a means by which to measure the moments of the day, humanity lost it's naive wonderment at the mysterious around them, falling instead into a hurried life of dissatisfaction and unappreciation for mortal life. As punishment, Dor was exiled to a life of immortality in which he would exist each day with the knowledge that his stretch of time was endless, and for each moment of his never-ending life, he would be forced to hear the wails and moans of every human on earth who ever wished for a life of greater or lesser time than what is given. 
 Left with only the prophecy that his misery would end only when the heaven met the earth, Dor is forced to find two unhappy earthlings and to teach them to grasp the essence of appreciating a meaningful existence. He chooses Sarah Lemon, a suicidal teenage girl cursing her existence after a failed crush gone wrong, and Victor Delamonte, a wealthy elderly man who plans to cryogenically freeze himself near the end of his tragic battle with cancer. 
 Dor must teach Sarah and Victor to examine the consequence of removing themselves from the world by illustrating the importance of living in the moment. Once this feat is accomplished, Dor will be freed from the viscious plague of immortality. 
 I can appreciate the thoughtfulness behind the story, and I don't doubt that the moral of the appreciation of life is indeed a valuable charm to be given to readers. So, it's not really the message that I object to as much as it is the means by which the message is conveyed. 
 I mean, maybe it's just me, but I'm not entirely fond of the short, choppy segments that constantly switch third person perspective between each character, making them distant and disgenious to me as a reader. How can I connect with these characters and feel their struggles and joys when everything is so rushed and glossed over in a little 200 page fable? 
 Also, I just feel that Albom creates such overly saccharine stories that the message feels too over-dramatized to be taken seriously, at least to me. Why would the conceptualization of an entity, time, that existed beyond man's mentality of such create such a detriment to our main character? Is it better for man to live in ignorance, wondering if it will be either the sun or moon that wins the epic battle ever so often, asserting its place in time ever-so-often at seemingly regular intervals? Did it not seem, as life continued on one event after another, that the sun appeared with some regularity in the proximity of one's position again and again? 
 I mean, sure, it's just a backstory to build up the reader to the moment at which our characters sappily embrace the importance of love and the meaning of existence -- but even this climax felt flat and impersonal to me. I can relate neither to a teenage girl attempting to gas herself to death after a boy (who was not even her boyfriend) failed to show her that which she thought was the proper level of attention nor to a lavishly wealthy elderly man who has the funds and the connections to cryogenically freeze his body in order to propel himself into a future where the pains and ailments of mortality have been cured forever. The characters were so extreme that I just couldn't take them seriously in any reference to myself. 
 Additionally, as in the other Albom titles I have read in the past, the characters were just too abrupt in changing the error of their frivilous ways, instantaneously realizing that life is perfectly and beautifully wonderful, vowing to live each day in the future as if it is nothing less than a precious gift that will never be wasted. So what happens to Sarah and Victor a few weeks down the road, when the immediate emotional repurcussions of the overdramatized events fade away, leaving them in the midst of new problems and new headaches? 
 Or maybe I too am just bitter, given that I am a miserable type-A personality with a fascination for over categorizing and over intellectualizing the simple things in life rather than simply and blissfully embracing and enjoying them? 
 I'll still give this one props, despite it's flaws, because I think that beneath the sap and the drama there is indeed a lovely concept and a creative plotline. While I would personally prefer a more fleshed out full-length novel, allowing the characters to give us more depth and complexity, I know that there is a massive audience that absolutely adores anything that Albom writes. Readers of his previous works will undoubtedly feel satisfied and I'm sure this author will gain swarms of new fans based on this title alone.