Dark Matter (Book Thoughts) by Blake Crouch

I can’t believe February is more than half over already! I took a little break from ARCs recently and spent some time catching up on books from the late 20-teens by popular authors.  I almost always have a physical, ebook, and audiobook going at all times, and without a digital ARC due soon I have been taking advantage of the Libby app to try some new authors.

Recursion by Blake Crouch was hugely popular on bookstagram when it came out, but I thought the synopsis for Dark Matter sounded more interesting and grabbed that one first.  What an absolutely thrilling book, a mix of sci-fi, thriller, multiverse, and love story without being a romance. I would fully recommend the book to pretty much anyone interested, and definitely want to pick up more books by Crouch.

Bookish Quick Facts:

• Title: Dark Matter
• Series: N/A
• Author: Blake Crouch
• Publisher & Release: Ballantine Books, July 2016
• Length: 352 pages
• Rate & Recommend:  Yes for fans of thrillers, multiverses, and thinking about life’s big questions

Here’s the synopsis (taken from Amazon:

A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy

“Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. Hiswife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human—a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.

Take another look at the last paragraph of the synopsis, because it is absolutely 100% accurately what the book is about.  Jason is put against impossible odds to get back home to his family.  Travelling through dangerous alternate universes, getting closer and closer – he must discover what exactly HOME means to him in order to get back to that place

Dodging freezing storms, a deadly plague, murderous versions of himself, watching his wife die over and over in other universes . . . then as he gets closer, and closer, Jason must truly reconcile the choices he has made to come home.

I liked the Daniela character too, she doesn’t get that much page time but projects a confidence and determination no matter which life she is living.

I can’t say much more without spoilers but the pacing is FAST.  There is only one place where the science gets a little deep, and otherwise it is a very accessible sci-fi thriller.  There is plenty of danger and real stress on the characters, I never really knew who was going to live or what the outcome would be.

It was impossible not to read this one over the course of a long weekend!

I definitely recommend for adult fans of thrillers, multiverses, and hard life questions!