Reviews

Dare to Know by James Kennedy

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merlandre's review against another edition

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4.0

An intriguing idea that gets somewhat confusing at times.

sausome's review

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2.0

I was lured by the premise of this book: a company that uses some kind of molecular science to determine someone’s year of death to paying customers? Yes, tell me more! However, the book failed to deliver anything interesting to me, and ended up being more a narrative story about how this main guys life has fallen apart. I ultimately found I didn’t really care about the main character or the complete and detailed history of his life. What I wanted to know more about was the science or just have more anecdotal experiences with this death date, but it was EXTREMELY in the background. Sometimes I even forgot that that was a theme of the book with some especially long historical descriptions. I think the comparison to “Dark Matter” and “Annihilation” were way of base, since both books include more about the science aspects than this book did. I just found myself bored, unfortunately.

misha_ali's review against another edition

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5.0

Objectively, I would give this three stars but since the GR scale is based on my personal enjoyment, this one's a five. I love a POV character with a rich inner-world thinking about their lives and memories, so I knew early on that this would be highly rated unless it really botched up the landing.

I enjoyed the contemplative first half and the second half very nearly collapses on itself but, in my opinion, it's saved. I enjoyed the overall journey a great deal and now I also hate specific songs by the Beatles.

fisk42's review

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5.0

This book hit on several niches that could have worn thin but didn't. Each time my enjoyment of the book was waning the author adding in a new element that kept me engaged.

If you like:
Science Fiction that is a thin veneer for the author to wax at length over their life's shortcomings.
Random philosophizing.
Science Fictional concepts that are shoehorned in an odd way with a mix of science and philosophy.
A dash of references to the St. Louis area.
And most importantly: Books that go off the rails into the weird.

Then this book might be for you. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend this book.

One of my favorite BookTok'ers listed this as one of their favorite books of the year. So I read it on a lark and I just so happened to be in the right mood to enjoy all the bullshit that has clearly turned off almost every other reader on Goodreads.

batwoman411's review

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4.0

3.5 stars rounded up for good writing and my favorite kind of spec fic thriller. This math nerd, techie tale is also a love story. I was pretty immersed until the ending which lost me a bit. But maybe it will be better for you.

thatweirdbookgirlie's review

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2.0

Unfortunately there's a lot of problems with this book that had such an interesting concept.
Some of those problems include:
The narrator's obsession with his ex girlfriend Julia, even though based on the flashbacks they didn't even seem like they were that good for each other and that he knows that.
In general the flashbacks didn't seem to much for the book at all.
Whatever happens in the last quarter or so of the book (after he winds up at Julia's house) was just a mess. I don't even know how to explain what happened, but it was a trainwreck that I mostly glazed over just to finish the book.