“Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human—a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.

My Thoughts

Frankly, I wasn’t sure where to go with this review. There is no way to talk about this book without spoiling it and I really don’t want to spoil it because it is such a fantastic read.

Imagine a reality where there is another version of you that took the ‘other’ option, and then multiply this by infinity. For example: You chose to study Pharmacy instead of Medicine; Guess what, you have actually done both. My analogy probably won’t make sense to you, and I still don’t fully understand it to be honest. There are a lot of scientific explanations that I rushed through because I needed to find out what the hell was going on.

Of course, if you are like me and you’ve watched alot of shows like Continuum etc, you can tell who the mystery abductor is from the get go but that’s where my detective skills ended. I have never come across anything like this, and I honestly hope this is not an actual theory because my mind can’t deal with the possibilities.

You might have noted that I haven’t said anything about the story itself, that’s because there is nothing to say. It’s a gripping, mind blowing, fast paced “love” story; Like “Dead Pool” says, isn’t everything really a love story? This story is all about how the choices we make in our lives could literally come back to haunt us, push us to do unthinkable things and turn us into better or worse versions of ourselves.

I was only going to take a quick peek at it when I got it but by the time I caught myself it was 4am, I was still wide awake, my heart was racing and I was in shock. I mean, just at the point when you think, “Okay, now we are getting into the typical action film kind of scene”, everything blows up in your face. It’s Ridiculous.

The story however feels like a movie, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing since it will soon be made into a movie for real. I can’t help thinking this is actually a screenplay and it kind of feels like cheating but that’s just my pet peeve.

My Verdict

I haven’t read books in this genre in a long time, and this was a fantastic reintroduction. This is also my first Blake Crouch Novel and it definitely won’t be the last. I would recommend reading it before the movie comes out, because we all know movies can ruin books or just so you can say that you did.

Read the First Chapter here

P.S. I received this book from ‘Blogging for Books‘ in exchange for a fair and honest review.