Reviews

Recursion by Blake Crouch

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peaknit's review

4.0

So clever, so good.

Enjoyed this one far more than Dark Matter. The stakes, both emotional and physical, were a lot higher, and it felt like more coherent of a story line with a tighter ending. Barry and Helena were great characters, and the pacing through their various years apart and then together really worked. Don't be intimidated by the sci-fi label on this if that is not your typical genre. This reads far more like a speculative thriller, no hard science knowledge necessary to understand what's going on.

cowboyjonah's review

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medium-paced

3.0

Oh my god...I finally finished...I chose to start this book the last month of my semester which was obv not the right choice since it took me a month to finish😭it wasn't even that boring I think I just wasn't invested enough to keep reading consistently. I would definitely be more interested if this was a movie.

Blake Crouch gets so much praise in scifi lit and honestly I don't rlly see the hype... His writing style is extremely tame and the amount of line breaks to emphasize drama gets super repetitive. His stories are interesting ig but never have me emotionally invested and by the end he just loses the plot and a million things start happening and it becomes pointless. I didn't rlly understand Barry and Helena's romance in this too, it started so quickly and suddenly they've lived all these lives together...the first half with the fms was definitely more interesting to me. I prefer more thematic scifi and he writes more popcorn scifi. Entertaining but nothing extraordinary.

Debating between 2.5 and 3 ⭐ but part of it was probably my own fault for taking years to finish this

ohemgee's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

spatterson12's review against another edition

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4.0

It's been a few years since I've read Blake Crouch, but it was well worth the wait.

This was pretty fast paced and I appreciated the dual perspectives (Barry's was my favorite). Crouch does a great job at not overcomplicating the science.

It did start to hit a Groundhog Day effect that went on a little too long toward the last 1/3 or so of the book that could've been trimmed. And if not trimmed, not so identical from one attempt to the next.

I would be interested for this to be turned into a mini series.

TW: suicide (like to the point it almost becomes desensitized)

Helena was determined to building a chair that could help her mother retain memories as her dementia progressed. This chair enabled her to return back to a specific memory and live life from that point forward. The issue -- when she reached the original date of her travel, memories from the original life would emerge, giving her two sets of memories. She wasn't the only one affected, everyone else in the world would suddenly snap to have multiple memories on that day.

Barry was a cop who stumbled across this memory loss paradigm while on duty. He came across a woman who was convinced she had a husband and son, but when she found the husband in present day, he acted as though she never existed and he was happily married to another woman. Barry was then tricked into a time travel but Helena's rival, Slade, who used the chair for his own gain. Barry was able to prevent the death of his daughter, only for the moment the double memories his daughter was faced with dead memories and couldn't handle knowing the alternate reality.

Barry and Helena had to team together to save the world and everyone they cared for.