Oh, readers…I don’t know what to say. Did you read Dark Matter? If you did, of course you’ll have to read Crouch’s latest; I can promise you that this one does not disappoint. Do any of you remember the 2002 film Minority Report with Tom Cruise? The story has a little bit of that vibe, but so much better. If you like to dabble in accessible sci-fi or speculative fiction, this is the book for you. Please make sure to pick this up when you have some dedicated reading time ahead of you because you won’t be able to put it down!

What if you could go back and change the past? Would you risk changing the outcome of those around you just for your own benefit? This book is an adventure from start to finish. If you liked The show Fringe - this book is right up your alley. Apparently there will be a Netflix adaptation and I’m on my toes in anticipation!! !

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After about 50 years of reading SF, all of these memory enhanced / destroyed stories start to sound alike. Mr. Crouch's book is doing well and I am glad for him. For me, he seemed to be covering no new ground.

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past".
- George Orwell, 1984

Mindboggling, thought-provoking, innovative, convoluted.

This is one of those books where I had to sit back and mull on what I just read. Every time I think Blake Crouch has achieved his magnum opus (Dark Matter) he raises the bar another level. Imagine if you will if you could have a "do-over" of your life. The majority of people would jump at the chance but not so fast! It seems like an easy question with a simple answer but it is more complex with a multitude of possible implications that we cannot even comprehend.
What would happen if your memories could be replaced by new ones and you could live your life over and over again? Where do the original memories go? How would it affect the people around you and possibly the world at large? Blake Crouch tackles this conundrum beautifully in this masterpiece.
Helena Smith is a brilliant neuroscientist who is trying to preserve memories to help people like her mother whose memories have been taken away by Alzheimers. Barry Sutton is a New York City policeman who is dealing with his own regrets of the past and the choices he made. Sutton is called in to try to talk down a woman who is suffering from "False Memory Syndrome" and is threatening suicide. Next to nothing is known about FMS and whether it is contagious or where it came from. What follows is an incredible combination of a time travel/alternate dimension/groundhog day type of story.
I found myself pulled in from the beginning and was unable to put the book down. I had to go back and reread certain pages because the people, places, and things literally changed so rapidly. It was an intriguing and not to mention mentally exhausting read but oh so worth it.
In short, I loved "Dark Matter" but I love Recursion even more. Definitely, a must-read for SciFi fans who love speculative fiction and others who enjoy reading books that make you think outside the box.

Science fiction is definitely not the genre that I tend to gravitate toward.  After reading and LOVING Dark Matter, I was super excited to see Recursion in the Netgalley gallery of books for review.  When I got the ebook, I couldn't wait to dive in.  

Recursion reminds a bit of Total Recall. Helena Smith is dedicated to her research into preserving the memories of Alzheimer's patients.  When she is offered every researchers dream, she jumps at the opportunity.  Barry Smith is a cop investigating a new phenomenon called False Memory syndrome.  Helena and Barry's worlds collide and they must work together to stop reality from crumbling around them

Crouch has done it again with Recursion - a fantastically well-written story.

(NetGalley ebook -  I received a complimentary advanced reader copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

Science Fiction | Adult
Holy hannah – hang on to your hat! It’s another another terrific, mind-blowing story from the author of Dark Matter. Where to begin? Or rather, when? NYC Detective Barry Sutton stumbles across an amazing device as he investigates False Memory Syndrome, a phenomenon in which people are suddenly remembering entire alternative lives that aren’t real. The device is a memory chair, the work of physicist Helena Smith. Having watched her mother deteriorate from early-onset Alzheimer’s Syndrome, Dr. Smith has has spent her life trying to find a way to capture our most precious memories so they aren’t lost when brain disease takes hold.
Thanks to a very generous benefactor, she and her team build a functioning memory chair that lets you relive your most vivid memories. But her backer sees so much more potential – the ability for your consciousness to go back into the memory and relive that time. But as False Memory Syndrome reveals, that means reality is nothing more than a memory. Helena quickly realizes the Pandora’s Box she’s opened. She and Barry team up to try and fix the past so the future is solid. The title helps explain – a recursion, as best I understand it, is a kind of computer code that refers to itself and causes a repetitive loop. I can’t say anything more than that, and once again, what a wild ride! As timelines kept shifting, I thought I should grow tired of it, but it was truly fascinating and riveting to the very last delightful page. Loved this one! It’s sweet, horrifying, engrossing, and mindblowing. My thanks to Crown Publishing for the advance reading copy provided digitally through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42046112

This book exceeded expectations. Those that enjoyed Dark Matter will find Recursion just as wonderful, if not more. Blake Crouch does a wonderful job marrying complex physics to possible technology and the complexities of the human condition.

Recursion is an engaging sci-fi thriller filled with suspense that explores what could happen when humans, with all our fallibility attempt to control history. What if you could go back and undo the things that have filled you with regret, is that a good thing or would it only make things worse.

Wow- what a ride!

Recursion blew me away. It tackles big themes like the value of life and second chances, the role of humanity in society and does this with an in intricate plot and developed characters. This book made my mind hurt, but in a good way and had me paying close attention to details from page one.

This is a must read and i am saying this as someone who never reads science fiction.

Thank you to #netgalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Another winner from Blake Crouch after Dark Matter- this time thriller is every bit as complicated and gripping. I liked this better than Dark Matter as I did not like the ending of that book. I found this more compelling all the way through.

Barry and Helena are time travellers by situation as their separate alternating stories eventually meet up and zig zag. Helena is a scientist who has developed a chair that allows one to travel back in time; Barry is a NYC cop whose life has been devastated by his daughters death and ultimate marriage breakup. What if you could start over again - would you be happy? This theme is woven into a scientific / psychological :/ even political narrative that draws you in - in its plausibility.

You think - could this really happen. What deepened the book for me was all the talk and thoughts about time and memory - on the scientific level and personal level for each of the characters.

All of this is woven into a can’t put it down thriller - that grips and twists and turns.

A great summer read. I got an advance copy of this book from NetGalley. Read August 2019

Another thrilling science fiction novel, Recursion by Blake Crouch is an exciting standalone novel readers won’t want to miss. This latest novel by Blake Crouch touches on memory, alternate timelines, and how these effect people, much as he did in his previous novel, Dark Matter. Unlike Dark Matter, this novel takes a much wider scope and plays on some very different ideas. Instead of quantam mechanics we explore memories, the mapping of memories, and what would happen if people could suddenly remember what they’d gone through in other timelines that never happened.

The story is told from two different viewpoints. The first is Barry, a divorced NYC police officer whose daughter passed away as a teenager a decade earlier. The second is Helena, a neuroscientist working on mapping memories in hopes of providing some kind of cure for her mother suffering from Alzheimer’s.

The pacing begins very solidly, following Barry as he attempts to talk a woman remembering a different, better life that never existed, one where she was married to a wonderful man off the ledge of a NYC skyscraper. A mystery soon unfolds – thousands of people across New York are remembering events which never happened, times where their lives took vastly different terms which experts call False Memory Syndrome. No one knows why this is occurring or how to stop it. Meanwhile, Helena is working on a rig far out at sea on a new technology to map memories so they can be re-experienced later, even if the individual has forgotten them due to time or diseases. But the technology doesn’t work exactly the way she expects them to and, in the shadows, someone in manipulating events.

As the story continues the pacing picks up as the danger becomes more intense. Barry and Helena’s stories remain separate until they crash together, both trying to solve a problem neither are sure can ever be fixed. Slowly, the world begins to be unmade.

This is a fresh, exciting, frightening exploration on how far people are willing to go in order to fix their regrets, follow a different path, right past wrongs (real or perceived), and have a better life. Though the pacing and characterization starts off a bit slowly, readers are very soon sucked into a world where timelines are mutable and the past might not be real.

While multiple timeless and shifting memory are core components of the novel, they are never presented in a way which is confusing. Nothing is ‘timey-wimey.’ Everything is explained in a straightforward manner, can be easily followed by readers who don’t often read the subgenre, and, unlike some other attempts at similar concepts, doesn’t fall apart under scrutiny. Crouch is a master plotter, carefully mapping out the series of events and never lets the reader get lost.

Recursion by Blake Crouch is a fantastic addition to science fiction exploring multiple/alternate timelines. Readers will want to pick up this standalone novel before the Netflix adaptation premiers, which is already planned.

Blake Crouch does it again! This book was so amazing. I didn’t think anything would top Dark Matter, but Recursion was just as exceptional. Blake Crouch is an instant favorite author. Everything I’ve read by him so far has been brilliant. If you loved Dark Matter, you’ll love Recursion.

I read and liked the Dark Matter book and liked it very much. Recursion is not related to Dark Matter, even though it also has parallel universes in the center of the plot, but it is completely different.
It is well written and I just could not stop reading it. I liked the characters. I liked the action. I liked the science. Everything was good and reading was tons of fun.

I received a digital copy of the book from NetGalley

Crouch is great at mindbending sci-fi that really makes you think, and this is no exception. Like Dark Matter before it, this was suspenseful and fun. Recommended.

WOW 4.5 stars - I was completely blown away! Thriller plus Sci-Fi equals one crazy, mind-boggling, addictive and suspenseful ride!! Once I picked it up I couldn’t put it down. Recursion is a must read!
I’m equally excited to hear Netflix has bought the movie rights. I can’t wait to see it!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"Memory makes reality" Recursion is an entertaining science fiction thriller about time, identity and memory with a time-travel aspect. The story is unique and nothing like anything you have read before. The book deals with FMS (False Memory Syndrome), a mysterious disease that drives its victims mad with memories of a life never lived. The disease is contagious.

Helena Smith, neuroscientist, wants to build a device to allow people to preserve their most intense memories. Barry Sutton, NYPD policeman, is investigating FMS as many people are reporting that they have contacted this disease. These two characters become the narrators for the story.

The novel is action-packed and the story is fast-paced which makes for a very interesting read. I have read Dark Matter and enjoyed that book too. I'm not really a science fiction buff but Crouch's writing is excellent and makes for a very easy-to-understand novel. I am now interested in what Crouch comes up with next. I would highly recommend this book to those who love unique science fiction thrillers.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Crown Publishing for a free copy for an honest review.

I liked Dark Matter more, but this was an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. A good book, but it isn't for my middle grade classroom.

The first time-travel novel I ever read was The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. I was 9 years old at the time, in 4th grade, and became fascinated by the concept of time travel, following H.G. Wells with Richard Matheson in Bid Time Return, Ray Bradbury in his story, "The Sound of Thunder", and Time and Again by Jack Finney, the movie "Arrival" and the story from which it was derived, "The Story of Your Life", up to and including Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines Trilogy and Dark Matter, but never, in my 60 years as an avid reader has my mind been quite so completely blown as it was in Recursion, a brilliant, engrossing and mind-bending read and the perfect follow-up to Dark Matter. If I could give it more than 5 stars I would.

In Recursion, Mr. Crouch adds a new dimension to the time-travel trope by including the very concept of time being linked to individual memories in the way that our perception of time and reality are inextricably linked to the present--that being the only way our minds can comprehend what we view as our reality. But what if the past, present and future are all happening simultaneously? That topic formed the basis of the film "Arrival," which included alien intelligence, while in Recursion, one lone woman scientist, Helena, is desperately wanting to restore the memories lost to her Alzheimer-stricken mother, to give her back some of her past, and Helena devotes her life to trying to create a device (in this case a chair) to do just that, but work is slow, her research grant is running out, and her mother's memories are disappearing faster than she can create a way to preserve those memories her mother still has left. That is until she meets, Marcus Slade, a multi-billionaire, willing to give her unlimited funding to hasten her research, but little does anyone know his true motives, or what Helena linking herself to Slade will ultimately mean, not just to her, but to the entire world.

As the novel opens, on a different timeline, Detective Barry Sutton is investigating a possible suicide and another attempt at one, both believed to be related to what is being designated as FMS, false memory syndrome, in which some people suddenly and inexplicably begin to experience memories of living lives they don't believe they've ever lived, and unable to rationalize what's happening to them, begin to think they are losing their minds and commit suicide, and such occurrences are increasing. The CDC is trying to find what they believe is the pathogen infecting those with FMS, but what you'll soon learn is that it
s not a pathogen at all, it's both something miraculous in many ways, and terrifying in others, and it will you have questioning your own life and wondering what if you could go back into your own past and change something that happened to you, or undo something you did or said, or that someone else did--what long-term effect would that have on the rest of your life, and every other life on the planet? Even if you're not a fan of science fiction, I believe that this novel and its characters cannot fail to move you, impress you, and engross you in their lives and their experiences. I've been reading Blake Crouch novels for years and in my opinion, this is his best novel to date.

It took me a full week to read this novel, a rarity for me (I read Moby Dick in a single day), because I had to keep stopping to apply the questions raised by Mr. Crouch and his characters to my own life and experience. What if I could have prevented the death of my mother when I was 15 years old? What if she had lived? I'd never have met my step-family, and probably would never have met my husband of almost 43 years. What if that one single change affected everything and everyone else? I think you'll find yourself doing the same thing while reading this amazing, thrilling, terrifying and masterful novel, and it's one I cannot recommend highly enough.

Kudos to Blake Crouch for taking me on this mind-bending, mind-boggling journey with this brilliantly conceived and beautifully written novel.

I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.

I tried so hard to get into this one as I have multiple family members who have suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's but this was just too far out there for me.

As good as Dark Matter, if not BETTER! A very clever idea about human memory and it's relation to the human being. A story that was intricately woven together in a manor only Blake Crouch can do.
LOVED IT!

Love love love this book! This book was absolutely amazing! It was not what I expected but the realness of it made it so interesting and thought provoking! I would highly recommend this book!