Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Book Title: Dark Matter
Author: Blake Crouch
Series: None
Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Science Fiction
Published: July 26th 2016 by Crown

REVIEW:

This story is told from the perspective of Jason Dessen, a physics professor living in Chicago with his artistic wife Daniela and teenage son Charlie. On a casual night on his way coming home from a local watering hole, Jason’s life as he knows it becomes one huge question mark.

I’m incredibly impressed by Blake Crouch’s writing, characterization, creation of the mind-boggling concept of this story. The quandaries of life that are laced in these pages really make you think and begin to examine your own life. From start to finish this book is in the fast lane and it is utterly addicting. From start to finish this book is utterly satisfying.

“We’re more than the sum total of our choices, that all the paths we might have taken factor somehow into the math of our identity.”

I imagine this is how the icosahedron inside a Magic 8 Ball feels because my brain is boggling in my head after reading this book. This is a deep thinking, thought provoking, and total mind fuck (excuse my language but seriously this is what comes to mind after what I just experienced.) To imagine the possibility of living in an alternate world similar but not to the only one you have known to exist. The possibility to start a new. Wow.

“We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we’re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.”

I highly, HIGHLY recommend this book. I almost never pick up a book in the sci-fi genre and man am I SO glad I did. I got my eye on you Blake Crouch. Thank you for this trippy ride and I can say with certainty that I will be reading more sci-fi novels if it’s penned by you.

SYNOPSIS:

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

– – –

‘Are you happy in your life?’

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. Before he awakes to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before the man he’s never met smiles down at him and says, ‘Welcome back.’

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife 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.