mayday_the_cleric 's review for:

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

4.5

adventurous emotional inspiring 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

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If you only have just thought about planning to read this book, then stop reading comments and pick it up right now, because this is the kind of a book that the less you know about the premise before going in, the more you'll enjoy it. 

This story is just mind-bending and fucking phenomenal, going from one thrilling twist to another. It's tense, adventurous, and dark, but also surprisingly introspective and quite inspiring. And I can genuinely say there wasn’t a single moment I felt bored when reading this. 

 The central theme of the book is all about your life choices, regrets, and the what if’s; about how the choices you’ve made and the experiences you already have are what define who you are, while the lives you could’ve had are just not important to you. This might sound like a self-help book, but I swear to you, it's so much better than that.

It all points to the fact that my identity isn’t binary. It’s multifaceted. And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn’t just the inverse of who I am. It’s an infinitely branching system that represents all the permutations of my life between the extremes of me and Jason2. 

The writing is fast-paced and full of chilling imageries. I didn’t really care about his family, but I was strongly invested in Jason’s journey and wanted what was best for him who had gone through so much shit.

I even cheered loudly when he finally held his wife in his arms again and when she believed every messed-up thing he’d been through and was willing to ride or die with him

. 

What I really liked is that even though Jason is not a complex character with a dark side but just a simple person who loves his family, the author managed to sprinkle in these little moments with him and write him in such a way that you couldn’t help but root for him and hope he succeeds, and he even made the simplicity of his character plot-relevant as well.

Overall, highly recommend this book to anyone who's in a reading slump and looks for a book that gets them engaged, because it'll sure do the job.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Blood, Murder