Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to finish this book. I had to stop around 35% of the way through the e-book ARC. This book was ultimately not for me, it seems. Simply put, I got quite bored with the plot and didn’t have enough of a reason to read at my low level of engagement for the next 65%. No element of the plot, or characters provided up until that point, were interesting or intriguing enough to propel me forward. I’m usually okay with somewhat slow pacing, but in a sci-fi novel like this, I was looking to be more engaged by the point I ended up quitting at.
I’ll start out with what I liked/the positives: this has really unique concept and is wildly imaginative as a premise (what drew me to the book in the first place was the plot description). The theme park setting, when it was featured, was very exciting. The most fun I had during my journey with this book were the theme park scenes, actually. The elevators to different worlds? Another really fun world-building element that I found engaging. I also thought the dialogue was very well-written—I even found myself chuckling aloud sometimes.
Now to the things I did not particularly enjoy and what ultimately brought me to my decision to stop reading before finishing the book. I found the most issue in the characters and their (lack of) development, as well as the (at times) overly descriptive writing that ultimately hindered my ability to understand what was going on instead of enhancing it. There are quite complex sci-fi concepts used in this book, and their descriptions and explanations were a little muddled and confusing at times—to the point where multiple pages were simply taken up with long, unclear explanations. My eyes found themselves skimming and glazing over until those sections were over because I was overwhelmed by the information and had trouble picturing what it was trying to describe. Ultimately, I had a lot of trouble imagining many of the scenarios in my head, which obviously lessened my enjoyment of the plot. For examples, all of the intricacy to the “replica” concept in kind of dragged on over time and became more of a nuisance to read about, rather than being interesting or intriguing. Jumps in time (ex. from the present, back to the past, back to the present) were not as clear as they could’ve been and confused me at times. Ultimately, I found this book to be too much explanation and exposition of the sci-fi concepts and not enough plot; a lot of telling and not showing. Which, in sci-fi CAN be fine and work well, but I didn’t find that it did here. There were too many sections that were just on the verge of being exciting and propelling you through the story, and then there would be another long exposition slump. I found the overall pacing to be all over the place. In my opinion, there were too long of gaps between the sub-plot (the past) and the main plot, to the point where I would find myself forgetting what had happened previously in the present with our main character and had to go back and re-read things frequently to remember (which isn’t fun; it breaks up the reading experience in a bad way). In terms of the characters, there just wasn’t anything about their personalities that sucked me in and made me want to ultimately find out their fates.
I’m quite disappointed that I didn’t end up liking this book, as I obviously was excited enough for it from the description/premise in order to ask for an e-ARC on NetGalley. The author is clearly talented and has a lot of really great ideas for world-building, I just thought it wasn’t executed in a fun-to-read way.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)