Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This book was so good. And it was completely unexpected, which was a nice surprise. It's kind of hard to summarize without giving away spoilers. The main question that this book confronts is what happens with the road not taken? How do you know "what if" would have been so good, and how do you not take for granted what you have? The story has to do with the concept of the multiverse, where there are infinite numbers of universes with all sorts of possible lives and outcomes going along next to each other, although we just can't access them. But in this book, Jason Dessen is accidentally dragged into the multiverse and taken away from his loving family, and he has to figure out how to make his way back to his world, his universe, one of infinity, and to get back to his family. There were some twists that totally surprised me; some people might have foreseen some of them, but I didn't, and I loved it. I thought the ending came kind of abruptly, but it was fine, and I was happy with how it all ended. And I really was fascinated with all of the science in this science fiction: the physics of the multiverse and the hidden worlds we don't know exist. I don't know what exactly of the story was fiction and what was actual science theory, but it was fascinating to me nonetheless. I loved that this book was kind of a romance at its core, about one man's love for his wife and son and his desire to do anything to get back to them.

A few disclaimers: I listened to most of it, and then I couldn't handle the suspense any more and didn't want to slowly listen to another hour and a half, so when I had two more chapters left I broke down and borrowed the ebook from the library and read the rest. And it was way better to listen to than to read--the writing looks very choppy with hardly any paragraphs but just short sentences all the way down the page. But when you're listening you have no idea how it's formatted, and I enjoyed it a ton. The narrator did a great job and like I said, I had to finish it ASAP. Also, there were some kind of annoying quirks about the author's writing that I can't imagine why an editor didn't fix. Like, EVERY TIME Jason turned off the lights or finished a drink, he said he "killed" it. Like "I killed the lights, I killed the lantern, we killed the bottle of wine." Over and over and over and over. It's totally a fine phrasing to do once or twice, but he said it every single time and it got to be distracting and annoying. Nobody says they killed something every time they do it. Also, there was some language.