I used 4 months of my life to create a psychological horror book about a time loop.
Imagine getting stuck in a timeloop, but every single fun, empowering trope about time travel is stripped away to make it a living hell. For Maya, Tuesday, October 12th starts as the absolute best day of her life: sunshine, burnt pancakes with best friends, and a carefree road trip to an autumn festival. But at 6:15 PM, a catastrophic semi-truck crash on Route 9 kills them all in an instant. Instead of death, Maya wakes up at 7:30 AM to the exact same alarm, the exact same burnt breakfast, and the exact same day. She is completely alone in retaining her memories, forced to watch her friends replay their innocent, scripted routines over and over again while she desperately tries to cheat death, while slowly descending into insanity. Also, to make it more intense, it's a direct experience from main character, since everything that's inside is described like it's her own diary, so there are her thoughts, her raw descriptions of pain she felt, how her perspective on friends changes as the loops continue, how she copes and every single breaking point.
My book focuses on psychological impact, highlighting the profound weight of the loops, the chilling awareness of dying every single time, and the agonizing experience of feeling all the pain. As the repetition stretches on without end, this relentless trauma slowly chips away at Maya's grip on reality, driving her closer and closer to losing her mind and committing to various harmful behaviours (which I can't describe on this subreddit).
I wrote this because I was so tired of the constant, repetitive plot where time loops are treated like neat little puzzles to be solved with a clever trick. I wanted to show it for what it actually would be: a grueling, deeply traumatic experience that breaks a person down, leading toward an unpredictable ending where things don't just magically snap back into place. Do you think this has potential as a genuinely good book?