So, here's the thing. This is a very pulse-pounding, thrilling, don't-start-this-before-bed-or-you'll-have-nightmares-all-night-like-I-did kind of book. BUT you literally don't even know what the main plot is until page 120 of a 340 page book. If that doesn't bug you, stop reading here. If you want to know what this book is really about, my review is under the tag.

Spoiler

STRAP IN, FOLKS.

So our protagonist is Jason. He is a brilliant guy who used to be a scientist but when his artist girlfriend got pregnant fifteen years ago, they both gave up their potentially illustrious careers to make a family together. Now he's an undergrad physics professor.

But that's when things get exciting. The world of Dark Matter has a multiverse, which means there is a universe for every possible permutation and choice you could make. So there is another Jason and Daniela out there who have an abortion, and become famous. And THAT Jason builds a device that lets you travel to other universes.

So he decides that the one thing his life is missing is a wife and kiddo, so he kidnaps our Jason and takes his place. This is all great.

The part that made this so lackluster for me is that our Jason is lame for the vast majority of the book. When the other Jason attacks him, he never fights back, and when he gets the chance to understand what it is that's happened to him, he runs around like a crazy person and adds dozens of pages of annoying chase scenes before you finally get the big reveal.

I really liked seeing the other worlds he encountered, but it wasn't until the very end that our Jason really becomes interesting.

It's a book with a lot of very cool ideas, and mediocre execution.

This is my second book by Blake Crouch, and it is irritatingly similar to the first (Dark Matter). It feels like he gets really high and says, hey what if? And then writes an entire novel that is entirely tension and has zero science.

Which is a shame, because he has some really cool ideas, and absolutely no idea how to build on them so they become interesting.

This is just another book about a white cop hero who saves the day because he wants his woman back.

Ugh.

The beginning made me tear up so many times because I didn't realize how much I missed having a president who is kind, intelligent, and empathetic.

A lot of the book is nitty gritty political detail, which I'm not super interested in, but I am glad I read it. He is a detailed and nuanced storyteller.

A fascinating look at the Grey Wardens of old and their griffons.

This starts around the end of Dragon Age 2. I don't think I ever realized that a full on mage templar war started. Oops.

This alternates between that "modern" day that we are familiar with and the fourth blight about 400 years ago. I loved how dark that timeline was.

Highly recommend for fans of the game. Fingers crossed DA4 gives us griffons.

I know this book is for twelve-year-olds, but I think it's really shitty that LGBTQ people were completely ignored. If your premise is that you find a magic machine that tells you who you will marry, and your main character is constantly commenting on other girls' bodies in a noticing-them kind of way, you need to at least have the possibility that she is a lesbian and that LGBTQ people exist.

Setting that aside, I hate my-dad's-fiancee-is-evil stories. It's been done.

I cried a lot reading this, mostly because it feels like wish fulfillment. To have a female president after Obama would have been so incredible, and McQuiston's bitter jibes at the trump administration did not go unnoticed.

The romance was lovely and sweet, and I liked that it wasn't too goopy because they were constantly ribbing each other and that made it fun. I loved June and Pezza, and I would read a whole book about Zahra and Shaan. Hell, a whole series.

I loved all the modernity. I hate reading books set in the past just for nostalgia's sake; it was so refreshing to read something so vitally NOW.

I wish there had been a more cohesive plot. It was hard to stay engaged with just the romance. I would have loved this if I was 19, but at 30 I need my protagonist to want something more than getting dicked down.

This was so bad it's legitimately hilarious. It feels like Robertson wanted to write a noir without ever having read one. One character in this modern, cell-phone-filled book, legitimately asks another character if you can change the font before printing something out. Another gaffe is when a character can't dial the emergency number from a locked phone; as far as I know, all phones can do that for safety reasons.

The mystery was outrageous and stupid; the denouement outrageous and disappointing.

This was the second in the series. I have not and will not read the first. Thankfully, since not one of these characters has the personality that god gave a square of singly ply toilet paper, I didn't feel like I missed anything.

This had a cute premise: Cupid matches up Noel and Grayson -- but she's already married and cohabiting with another man she loves. Now she has to figure out how to end the spell -- or realize Grayson is right for her. To no one's surprise, the back cover of course reveals she ends up with Grayson. (For the record, I'm fine with this, romance is always about the journey not the destination.)

However, everything else was terrible. Len, the fiance, is shown over and over to be a jealous and violent man, and yet most of the book is spent trying to find a new girlfriend for him. GROSS.

Noel is an asshole, with zero personality traits, and of course Grayson is rich and gorgeous and somehow exquisitely understanding of her insanity and also he doesn't worry about getting paint on his pants so clearly he's the one. It also irked me that you never understand why Cupid communicates with them, how the magic works, anything, and both of them just go with it.

Noel has literally zero friends. In all of her back and forth over which man to be with, she has no one to talk to. After Len leaves their house, she assumes he is homeless because he apparently has no friends or family either.

Uh, actually, maybe these two shitheads do deserve each other . . .

"I wish we could call a grown-up." The words slipped out without me wanting them to, but for once they were the right thing to say.
"So do bloody I, I can tell you," said Debbie.
"Me too," said Henry.
"I am a grown-up, and I want my mother," said O'Rourke.

Other than the above line that made me laugh, this wasn't funny? I was very disappointed. Maybe it's just that I read it 20 years after it should have been read.