Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Hi hi hi! It's been so long! How are you? Did you do anything fun this summer? Oh, really? How awesome! {I could continue this conversation for hours.}

Really, all I've been doing is my best to stay out of the heat, and that hasn't gone too well. We had a couple of days where it looked like it would be a miserable summer, and then it cleared up, and then it was like, just kidding, here's a few more hundred degree days, have a good time!

Mother Nature, right?

Anyway, one way I've been staying semi-cool is by reading, and I'm so sorry that I left this book until the very last minutes {it comes out tomorrow}.

“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. 

To say that this book was a trip would be entirely accurate. It was confusing {in the best way!} and had me guessing until the very end. There were some moments where I had to read the last few pages again because I couldn't remember who I was with and where we were. 

Oh man, this is going to be so difficult to avoid spoilers.

Jason Dessen is happy enough with his lot in life: a beautiful, loving wife that gave up her art career to raise their child; a son that hasn't yet reached those terrible teenage years of disowning his parents; and he's teaching what he loves at a good college. Then he's kidnapped, thrown inside a box, and wakes up in a world that knows him, but he certainly doesn't know it.

Thus begins the crazy tornado of confusion that is Jason Dessen's life. The people around him in this new world love him, revere him, because he has invented something that could change the entire world. The only problem is, this Jason doesn't know what the hell that Jason has done, and when this Jason tries to find his way back to his own life, the people that once respected him begin to hunt him down.

I can't even pinpoint one single thing that I love in this book. The mystery is intriguing, because you wonder {spoiler-y}, if my spouse had been replaced with someone that looked, acted, sounded, and essentially was exactly like him, would I be able to tell the difference? Then the book takes a turn for the worse and suddenly, Jason finds his life far too crowded. He thinks that he might have to do the unfathomable, and some others already beat him to it. It's insane to sit there and think what you would do if put in Jason's situation, and then wonder if something like this might already be happening. Basically, this book makes your brain hurt in ways that it didn't know it could hurt, and that's the mark of a great book.

I especially enjoyed reading about Jason trying to get back to HIS Chicago. You never really think about the things in your town that make it yours. I figured that if I had to make it home, I'd lay down placemarkers and street names, and bada bing, there's my home. But that's not the case in this book. One wrong turn, one negative emotion, could ruin "home" forever. 

Argh! I'm trying so hard not to give anything away, but it's so difficult. Lucky for you, like I said earlier, this book comes out tomorrow, so I would definitely recommend it go on your TBR list.