Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

16 reviews

faeriefox's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was incredible.

The worldbuilding between all of the worlds Jason went into was incredible; you really got the essence of each world from the start.

I also really loved *our* Jason. He never lost his moral compass, unlike so many other versions of him, and as a result, Daniela chose him over the others. It was so touching, too, when so many Jasons let the family go free once they knew what Daniela wanted, culminating this beautiful love story. 

I really got emotionally attached to the characters as well; I was devastated when Amanda left and constantly afraid for Charlie, Daniela, and Jason.
 

This book made me think a lot; it challenges so many ideas about life, love, identity, and choice. 

I also appreciated the fairly easy-to-understand scientific explanations; the fact that they were understandable added so much to the book, as well as just being very interesting.
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megan_wy's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Wow wow wow!!!! Just finished this book and I flew through it. That’s saying a lot too because I’m a very slow reader. I was really wanting to try a different genre of book after reading a few too many cheesy romance novels. This book easily hooked me and has me wanting to read more thriller / sci-fi novels. The story of Jason and the endless underlying meanings and interpretations of this book will keep you up at night questioning life. I had to stop and think a few times throughout the book to try and make logical sense out of some of the things that were happening. That’s part of the beauty of this novel I think, you really don’t know if the end is real Jason? Considering there’s a new version of Jason for every single choice he makes even AFTER the initial switch in the beginning, who’s to prove that the Jason in the end is the “real” Jason 🤯🤯🤯 

This story is just so different. It’s so intensely unique that it opened up so many new frames of mind for me in an amazing and analytical way. Although some parts are deeply confusing if you try to think to understand all the science and logistics behind it, the overall meaning and plot can still be easily followed. Each version of Jason wanted one thing, a happy life with someone he loved. That someone, even in the version where he left her for his career, was Daniela. He essentially had the “perfect” life in Jason2’s world, but we know that isn’t true. Jason2 was unhappy dreaming about a perfect life with Daniela and a family. I am so speechless over this book. I would highly recommend it!! Just be prepared to do lots of deep thinking and questioning of our reality that is “life.”
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katiefurms's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Not only is this an incredible concept for a story, but it is so phenomenally well written that i could not put it down. Absolutely incredible book.
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ellie_the_banshee's review against another edition

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adventurous tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

A sci-fi thriller, this book kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. It was interesting and well-written. The story is compelling, unsettling, and fantastical. parts of the science-y description/explanation were outside my realm of comprehension but all in all this book is incredibly accessible to all readers. The chapters are really long but the writing style made the book fly by for me.
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now_booking's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

This is my second book by this author and it was again mind-bending and confusing and yet absolutely wonderful. 
Even though I don’t read much sci-if, I was completely mind blown by this complex eminently human story of love and trying to find your way home when you are irrevocably lost. In this humanity, it was very similar to Recursion in being a sort of love story and an epic journey as much as it is about science.

The premise is that Jason is living a happy if somewhat “basic” and unspectacular life with his wife and son. While he and his artist wife, Daniela, might not have fulfilled the promise of spectacular careers in physics and art, having sacrificed that for building their family. They are more or less happy, until Jason is kidnapped and thrown into a multiverse and has to battle the dangers of infinite possibilities as well as all the different facets of himself to see if there’s any way to get the stars to align and find his way back home. 

For me, I adored every aspect of this. Jason as a character was compellingly human. Perhaps a bit too perfect, but a great, well-developed character to carry the story. The multiverse provides ample opportunity to challenge and stretch Jason and give us a sense of what he’s made of. And through that, we insert ourselves into the story and begin to think of what we would do and how we would react if we were in his shoes. This was sad, exciting, traumatic, adventurous, fun and I cannot recommend this enough.

If there are weaknesses, I think it’s in lots of loose ends. I also wondered how come Amanda’s place in the multiverse was never explored. Logistically-speaking, what are the implications for the characters in the way the book ends. It’s hard to explain what I mean without spoiling the book but I feel after the level of detail with which the sci-fi premise was put forth, the resolution was a little too abstract. That said, I did enjoy this and highly highly recommend even for non-sci-if fans. It’s absolutely brilliant. After I read Recursion, this was recommended to me a lot, and it has not disappointed.
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