Title: Lightbreakers
Author: Aja Gabel
Pages: 352
Release: November 4, 2025

Emotionally resonant and deeply felt, Lightbreakers plumbs the complex depths of love, loss, and grief through the eyes of three individuals caught in a tide of mourning and the “indestructible fiber” that can bind a family even when one strand is severed.

When Noah, a grieving quantum physicist, is recruited by an eccentric billionaire (are they ever not eccentric?), he gains access to a time machine that allows him to travel back to visit his 3-year-old daughter, just prior to her death. Gabel wisely avoids alternative timelines and branching paths, keeping the story grounded in the present and in the deep wounds that Noah and those in his orbit are working through.

I enjoyed my time spent with Lightbreakers and found Gabel’s prose quite lovely. Though heavy at times, it is never overwrought nor exceedingly bleak. I’m ill-equipped to vet any of the physics or quantum mechanics at play, but Gabel succeeds in making the science of time travel feel semi-plausible and always in service of the emotional heart of the novel.

★★★½

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.