Yeah, I kind of hated this book, not because it was particularly bad, but because as a SF fan I thought the time-travel excitement was... well, kind of bleah. The non-SF fans I know absolutely loved it.

(I also hate hate hate that stupid older man/young girl friendship/romance dynamic. It's the one thing that really ticks me off about Diana Wynne Jones, and to a lesser extent Bujold.)

Ted Chiang does some awesome stuff with time nonlinearity, if you haven't read him. The classic (SF) is "Story of Your Life," (http://heptapod.org/storylife.html), and I also really like (fantasy) "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate."