5/5 stars - I finished Blake Crouch’s latest novel while flying from Paris to Madrid today. I’m glad the only person sitting next to me was my friend Lili, because I was having some pretty dramatic reactions as I read the last 25% of the novel. (Gasping, putting down my Kindle to stare at my friend in disbelief... you get the idea.) I felt like this book had a slow build, but the end where our main protagonists try and try again to save humanity had me on the edge of my seat. (Well, maybe not literally because I had to keep my seatbelt buckled, but you get the idea.) If you’re looking for a page-turner for your next summer read, I think this is it.

This book is science fiction, love story, social commentary and detective story, all to be expected from Blake Crouch. It is complex, requiring close reading and concentration to follow the many time loops and concepts, but well worth the attention. I especially loved that my initial assessment of the characters, especially Barry, were challenged by their development and actions as the story progresses. The author continued to surprise with plot twists and change of tone and direction in each section of the book.

The book has broad appeal--readers who loved The Time Travelers Wife will like this, as will more traditional science fiction readers. Would highly recommend.

Few books do the time travel/alternate reality genre well... but Recursion is up there with the greats.

Told from two different perspectives, Recursion is a novel that hooks you from the beginning and never lets go. It tries to answer the "What if we just changed one minor thing in the past?" and does it well. The beginning of the book alternates between the past creation of the machine and how it affects the present-day realities. Eventually, they merge and then the game is truly afoot.

Plot aside, the characters are the true shining point of this book. Both Helena and Barry are exquisitely described, with their own motivations and reasons for making certain choices.

I cannot review it much longer without spoiling more. Well worth the read!

ARC from Netgalley in exchange for my review.

Wow! I loved the premise of this book.. What is memory and how does it affect our reality? This is a great mystery about power and choices and how we create our own reality. Great book!

Well another complete mindfu**ery from the absolutely brilliant Blake Crouch.

I can't even begin to succinctly tell you how good this book was. There are so many chances of spoilers that I'm scared to really even say anything. I want everyone to feel what I felt during this reading journey! I highly suggest going in blind.

However, I am going to attempt to review this book.

You follow a dual timeline throughout a portion of this book, actually you fall many timelines. Time gets a little muddied. The main characters being Barry who seems to just kind of fall headfirst into the insanity, and Helena who is ultimately the very catalyst for everything that happens. I loved both characters, but honestly its the story that really kept me pulled in. There is so much happening and so much riding on certain aspects of the stories that you are on the edge of your seat pretty much from the very beginning.
The plot is so exhilarating, and frightening, and it's not a Crouch novel without a little existential crisis going on.
All I can say for certain is 5 stars with a standing ovation. Get this book in your hands!

Blake Crouch is a genius..he has done it again...a book that transcends what you think are memories and weaves a tale part Groundhog day mixed in with the butterfly effect...how many times have you wished to go back in time to reunite with a loved one and preserve that memory or change the outcome..this book tackles that and what happens...loved the ending and Helena and Barry..

Thank you so much Netgalley for letting me read a great book and give an honest opinion.

How do I rate this book? Although I hate reading over hyped books, I was interested to find out what all the fuss was about and the story line seemed interesting.

A mysterious phenomenon, false memory syndrome, is affecting people and giving them memories of a different life. Detective Berry Sutton comes across this while being called out to a suicide.

We are also introduced to scientist Helena Smith who happens to have dedicated her life to researching memory and helping people preserve and relive those moments.

What happens when you create that technology and it then gets into the wrong hands?

Although very intriguing and entertaining for most of the book, towards the end I started losing some interest and skimming. Perhaps I’m not really a Sci-Fi person? I also did’t feel that invested in the characters and there were times I was getting dizzy from all the time/life lines.

Overall I’m happy I got out of my comfort zone and read this. At some point I would like to read Dark Matter but for now, I am taking a break and going back to my basic thrillers.

3.5*

I'm so glad that I was approved for this book! I watched the series based on his trilogy and then immediately ordered the books. Blake Crouch has a way of writing and mixing sci-fi & thriller into a creepy hit! I will definitely be reading more of his books! I couldn't put this book down!

Recursion is Blake Crouch doing what he does best: effing with your head.

A fun, time-traveling story that somehow does not bog itself down with detail yet is completely engrossing?!? Yep, sign me up!

Recursion is an outstanding contemporary science fiction thriller that is a great adventure full of suspense and power struggles and demonstrates how we can corrupt ourselves in controlling history. When you realise you’ve made a mistake can you go back and erase it, or is that the actual mistake.

The concept of capturing memories from the neural databases in our heads and replaying them as core memories is utterly fascinating. To imagine doing that for those with dementia would be an awesome breakthrough and accomplishment. This is the fundamental dream and motivation of Helena Smith as she watches her mother live with Alzheimer’s. Helena is a highly talented neuroscientist who is enrolled in the breakthrough research and development of a device (CHAIR) to capture memories. The team managed by her under the funding leadership of Marcus Slade discover if a person dies in the Chair they can capture and send their memories back in time to a point of a specific memory. The life they then live can be altered but when they arrive back to the date of transfer, the memories of both lives merge. This mental collision has serious repercussions as false memories when they come flooding back are causing suicides and breakdowns. Detective Barry Sutton investigates the phenomenon, only to be drawn into the fragile and recursive existence of time travel. What constitutes a human life, what constitutes existence, what happens with multiple timelines, are our bodies just transport equipment for our minds – oh my head hurts!

When I think about time travel, there are two issues that always play on my mind, the obvious one, how do you send physical material to a previous time period, and secondly the recognition that it’s all bound to end in chaos. The time travel bit whether physical matter or programmable memories still requires a suspension of reality and it’s better to set aside and remain a believer. What I loved, however, about this story was that it dealt with the chaos and built a compelling thriller around the eventual leak of the technology into the wider world and the major national forces that would pursue and use the technology. The escalating sense of chaotic fallout is brilliantly portrayed throughout the novel. At another level, we experience through the well-drawn characters the different motivations and competing pressures of altruism versus reward. Power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. Helena becomes the Frodo Baggins of this world, to remain incorruptible and resolve the impending doom, even if it costs her own life.

I enjoyed this book and it is a wonderful escape into a science fiction world that appeals to our recurring dream of being able to travel in time to right our wrongs and prevent catastrophes. Stuff integrity I think I’d still do that Lottery now that I know the numbers. 😂 I would recommend this book and I’d like to thank Crown Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC copy in return for an honest review.

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

Wow! A well-thought-out and well-executed story with great writing. Just wow!
I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

I write 200-word reviews. They are exactly 200 words. For Blake Crouch's Recursion, my review could be just writing the word "wow" 198 times and to end it with "read this!".

I rarely rate a book 5 stars. They have to be extraordinary, either extraordinarily written or be an extraordinary story. This was both. I also usually write my reviews soon after finishing a book but I needed time to decompress and process this story.

I was a Psychology major and had several people close to me suffer from Alzheimer’s so I am fascinated by memory. In Recursion, in 2007, a scientist works to create technology to preserve our memories to help her mother who has Alzheimer’s. In 2018, people suffer from False Memory Syndrome, an affliction that drives people mad with memories of living an entirely different life, a life they never lived.

Recursion asks, "what if you could go back through your memories and “fix” them? Change events in order to protect children, countries, civilizations." Would you?

I have wanted to read Blake Crouch for more than a decade but did not get around to it. I am annoyed I did not read him sooner.

This review was published on Philomathinphila.com on 7/2/19.

Blake Crouch is back with a new sci-fi thriller—a mindbender about the nature of memories and the potential for catastrophic consequences when one relives them.

In his last book, DARK MATTER, Crouch explored alternate realities—what if you could go back and change everything? And what if you were trapped by time, unable to find a way out from an outcome you never expected? RECURSION takes those themes and deepens his explorations in this surprising, action-packed twister.

We first meet New York City cop Barry Sutton, on his way to save a woman from jumping to her death. She’s got False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction driving people like her to suicide. That night sends Barry down a rabbit hole that changes everything.

We also meet neuroscientist Helena Smith who has spent her career studying memories and how to preserve them for those who are losing them—like her mother. Unfortunately, she’s getting nowhere. Until one man offers her an opportunity she couldn’t refuse. A chance to revolutionize reality as we know it.

Except instead of changing the world for good, Helena’s work begins to unmake it, time and time again.

When Barry and Helena’s paths cross, they must work together to destroy everything Helena has worked for and save the world from total apocalypse.

Fast paced, tense and utterly mind-boggling, RECURSION is quite the thrill ride, and everything I hoped it would be after loving DARK MATTER so much. Intelligent, philosophical and thought provoking with undercurrents of romance make Crouch’s latest a compelling summer must-read.

This was my first Blake Crouch novel and it ended up being one of my favorite books of all time.

The story starts off in 2018 with Barry Sutton, a New York robbery detective, responding to a suicide call. A woman, Ann Voss Peters is going to jump off a building. She has FMS or False Memory Syndrome— thought by the CDC to be an infectious disease that leaves the patient with a strong sense of deja vu and a set of ‘false memories’ from a lifetime of living. Ann jumps from the building sending Barry Sutton to find out more about this woman and her ‘false memory life’, leading him down a dark, twisted and world-changing path.

And then we have Helena Smith in 2007, a genius neuroscientist who is trying to find a way to map the dying memories of Alzheimer’s patients like her mother. Unfortunately, her university doesn’t have the funds until a billionaire by the name of Marcus Slade comes along and takes her to his high-tech lab set on an oil rig and gives Helena the freedom to all the resources necessary to save memories, thus the memory chair is born. But Marcus has a hidden agenda that causes ripples through space and time itself.

This novel is just one big mind-bending twist and turns after the other. It is hard to write a review without spoiling much.
What scares me most about this novel is that its science fiction that feels closer to reality. And it’s terrifying.
There are many terrifying events that take place in the book such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, nuclear war, and mass suicides. (Trigger warning, there are a lot of suicides)

Due to the nature of the science fiction aspect of this book timelines are relived over multiple times. This is not done in a boring way, in fact, it’s actually quite interesting and adds to the twisty-ness of the story.

This story never gets dull, you’re at the seat of your pants the entire time, your mind gets boggled, flabbergasted, and absolutely wrecked! (But in the best way possible)

What happens at the end with Helena is really sad, I shed a few tears. She and Barry were my OTP and it broke me how it all had to end!

There is absolutely nothing that I would change about this novel, it’s a masterpiece. I’ve been recommending it to people left, right and center.

It’s one of the rare few novels that I’ve read lately that have really made me think, ponder my existence and reality. Is space and time really this fragile? Are we living in alternate realities? Could something like this be possible in the future? Would this technology be ethical to use? What if nefarious governments and peoples got their hands on it? So many unknowns yet so many possibilities!

Hands down this is a 5-star read. I’ve already purchased a physical copy and plan to purchase the rest of Crouch’s works.
I’m looking forward to the tv series, it’s gonna be one hell of a ride!

*I loved the book so much I went out and bought a copy at my local Chapters/Indigo/Coles.
**YouTube review at 11:15 in the video

Blake Crouch gets me every time, and Recursion is one of his most thought-provoking reads yet. This one has it all, y'all - science, philosophy, ethics, and of course plenty of mystery and suspense to boot. There is a lot of skipping around between timelines (ha!) so be on your toes, especially during the first half of the book. It's easy to become confused while reading this, but then I believe that's kind of what Crouch was going for. This is mind-boggling stuff, y'all, tackling memory vs. reality and more - a la Blake Crouch, no less, so know that you are in for one hell of a ride. Buckle up and grab a copy now!

Much thanks to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for an advanced copy of this book for review.

Title: Recursion
Author: Blake Crouch
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rating: 4.2 out of 5

NYC cop Barry Sutton lives every day with the death of his teenage daughter years before. One night, he tries to stop a woman from committing suicide, his first direct experience with False Memory Syndrome—a condition where victims have false memories of a life they never lived. While Barry is investigating, he stumbles into something he never imagined, something that turns what he thinks he knows into something ephemeral and ever-changing.

Helen is one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, fascinated with memory and how it shapes us and changes us. She has created a technology that can save memories, and allow us to experience them again, but she has no idea of the repercussions of doing so. Soon she and Barry are the only ones who know what’s going on through an ever-changing past and present that will always end in catastrophe—unless they manage to stop the destruction.

This novel turned everything on its head. I never knew what to expect from page to page, but I was enthralled by the journey. Or journeys, I should say. Crouch makes a complex concept believable and terrifying, as well as creating characters that I connected with, even in a world that is dark and scary.
Blake Crouch is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. Recursion is his newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Crown Publishing via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.)

I couldn't read his previous book but I remember really wanting to and then hearing about the hype and wanting even more. Luckily, I could get my hands on this one.

Unfortunately, it wasn't that good. A 3.5 with not enough to be rounded up.

We follow the stories of Helena, who's trying to come up with a machine to save the memories of those with Alzheimer's and the like, and of Barry, a cop whose life took a dive when his teenage daughter was run over and killed. The effects of Helena's experiment will reach Barry when cases of false memories drive people to suicide, and it all goes back to her invention.

Crouch has a style that at first made me think of Michael Crichton but later I decided he's more like Stephen King. I don't really know this for a fact, but I'm not so sure he plans so much before writing. It does make the read interesting when not even the author knows for sure where it'll go, but especially in a book surrounding time travel, it felt like going in circles at times.

Still, the idea of traveling back in time through memories is indeed interesting—that's what made me initially think of Crichton. The how and the details kept me glued to the book for most of it, and the writing is good enough for the genre. It's easy to be swallowed by the stories, the two main characters are relatable, too. As you can see, it has the elements of a nice read.

At the same time, it just stays there. Nice. Those who enjoy this science-fiction thriller genre will like this enough, but I don't see it marveling many. The whole theory behind the travels is weak and so are the plot twists. I don't remember feeling an inch surprised.

I do remember enjoying my time, though. Grab this book if you're need to something of the kind, you won't be disappointed.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Title: Recursion
Author: Blake Crouch
Publisher: Crown
Rating: 4.5/5

--Thank you to NetGalley and Crown for this ARC to review!--

Wow. Just wow. I knew I was going to like this book because I thoroughly enjoyed <i>Dark Matter</i>, but I wasn't expecting this. From synopsis: "Memory makes reality. That’s what New York City cop Barry Sutton is learning as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived." How could you not want to know what happens next?

<i>Recursion</i> follows main characters Barry Sutton, a NYC cop, and scientist Helena Smith who both find themselves intertwined in the mystery of FMS in ways that will change them forever. Helena has good intentions for her machine that can preserve memories, especially for people like her mother suffering from Alzheimer's. But, like the fears many have of new technology, Helena's science goes haywire and thus we have the story. I won't say much more because basically anything I could say could be a spoiler.

You HAVE to check out this book. It is both relatable and sci-fy-trippy and I challenge you to not wish you had some of this technology in your own life for one reason or another. The writing is thorough and paints a vivid picture of what the characters are going through. Nothing in this book is really too far-fetched. Even the acknowledgements mention that this science isn't too far off. Crouch has done it again! There is even a deal with Netflix to bring this story to the screen! Can't wait!

#crownpublishing #netgalley #blakecrouch #recursion #books #currentlyreading #accordingtomrsmadonna #sciencefiction #pageturner

I was worried that because of the multiple timelines that this book would be hard to follow. However, it really wasn't. I found the concept highly interesting. What if you could go back in time and change your life? What would it do to the rest of the world? I really enjoy a scientific book that explains what is going on without be feeling like I need to be a neuroscientist in order to understand it.

I received a copy from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What have I just read?? Brilliant writing and a mind boggling story that will have you rereading certain pages to make sure that what you are reading is really happening! This novel will take you on a relentless journey that will have your head spinning with every chapter.

The story takes place in present day and begins with a detective investigating a possible suicidal person suffering from FMS (False Memory Syndrome) a condition that seems to be cropping up more and more frequently. Then you have Helena who is a neuroscientist and is trying to find a technological way to achieve holding on to precious memories for Alzheimer patients since her own mother has been battling the disease for many years and does not have a lot of time left. This book is a real page turner that will have you holding your breath at times and also sitting on the edge.of your seat.

Blake Crouch is a wonderful writer and I don't know how he kept his facts straight throughout this story, but he did! I wouldn't recommend reading this book when you are sleepy because it will only keep you awake and reading well into the night. As I was reading I had many questions but is they were all answered by the end of this story. I am not a big science fiction fan but this author knows how to make fantasy eerily realistic and I am so glad that this is fiction because it could be considered a warning of what can happen when certain technology falls into the lap of the wrong individuals.

I want to thank Crown Publishing and Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this ARC!

I highly recommend this book to any reader who is looking for a great thriller with terrific writing and a unique storyline!
I have given this book a rating of 5 Mind Boggling 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 stars!!

4.5 stars
Wow! That was one mind-boggling, terrifying, sci-fi thriller!

Helena Smith has only ever wanted one thing, to help her mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s. She wants to develop a way to preserve memories. Barry is a NYPD detective and has come face to face with FMS – False Memory Syndrome. Not much is known about FMS, but it is greatly feared as more and more seem to be coming down with it.

I don’t even know where to start, this is one of those times when less is more. This was such a fun read! It was often hard to wrap my little brain around what was going on and yet I was completely addicted to this story. I frequently reread passages just to make sure I was reading it correctly. This book was intense, thrilling, and very cleverly written.

I would love to spend a day in Blake Crouch’s brain! Where does he come up with this stuff?? I don’t read science fiction, but the way he weaves sci-fi and the thriller genre is amazing! I am a fan for life!

I highly recommend this book as well as Dark Matter for those who love a good thriller, you won’t be disappointed!