Recursion by Blake Crouch

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: Recursion by Blake Crouch

Release date: June 11th, 2019

Genre:  Sci-Fi / Thriller

Published by Penguin Random House Audio

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ My Goodreads Rating

BOOK BLURB:

Barry Sutton is driving home from another long shift as an NYPD detective when the call comes in. A woman is threatening to commit suicide, and someone’s got to try to talk her down. Only as he stands on the rooftop, mere inches away from her, does he realize that the woman is infected with False Memory Syndrome, a mysterious disease that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. When Barry is unable to save her, he’s rocked to his core–not only by her death but the fear that he’s been exposed to this devastating illness.

Helena Smith is a brilliant but frustrated neuroscientist. If she could only get the funding, she’s sure she could build the ambitious device she’s long imagined–one that would allow people to preserve their most intense memories and relive them whenever they want. So when a billionaire entrepreneur offers to bankroll her project, she jumps at the opportunity–even if there are some strange conditions attached.

As Helena’s efforts yield stunning results, Barry investigates the mystery behind the woman he failed to save. He finds himself on a journey as astonishing as it is terrifying, ultimately revealing the true danger posed by Helena’s invention–and a plot that could bring about the end of reality as we know it.

Weaving together Barry’s story and Helena’s in ways even the savviest reader will never guess, Recurson is a brilliant science fiction thriller about time, memory, and the illusion of the present, built on our inability to escape the flashbulb moments that define us.


MY THOUGHTS:

If you haven’t read Blake Crouch’s latest book yet, I have no doubt that once you do, it will be the only thing you’ll want to talk about for DAYS!!!
The book synopsis makes you believe that there’s a new disease, FMS (False Memory Syndrome), except, FMS doesn’t even scratch the surface of everything this story throws at you.  It’s mind-twisting and it left me doubting reality as I know it.  I remember feeling this way when I watched Inception, except I was never quite satisfied at the end of that movie…but Recursion was EXCEPTIONAL!!!

Sorry, I’m rambling...

  I’m a sci-fi fan and even though the whole concept of time-travel has been explored in a lot of books and movies, Crouch was able to explore a new angle, one that merged actual scientific advances into a fictitious reality that might not be too far from the near future.
His narrative is fast-paced, leaving the reader with no time to think twice when turning the pages.  To make it even more interesting, there’s also a love story ♥.

“Time is an illusion, a construct made out of human memory. 

There’s no such thing as the past, the present, or the future. 

It’s all happening now.”

  It was a bit hard to keep track of the dates and timelines from the audiobook, but once I started writing down a few important dates, it got a lot easier to follow.  There’s really nothing that I disliked in this book.

“Life with a cheat code isn't life. Our existence isn't something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That's what it is to be human - the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.”

I’m waiting for Recursion to be adapted from book-to-movie so I can place it with the TOP 5 “time-travel” movies :
1. Dr. Who (the original Time Lord)
2. Back to the Future
3. Looper
4. Terminator
5. Inception

CONCLUSION:
If you could go back in time to change an old memory, even though the impact to the timelines might be impossible to predict, would you do it?

via GIPHY