Thank you so much to NetGalley and Coronis Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

3.5 ⭐️

I Contain Multitudes is a fast-paced sci-fi (not so much horror in my opinion) read that keeps you guessing until the very end.

I went in pretty much blind so I was intrigued from the start, but found that pacing slowed down a lot in the middle. This did make it feel tedious to get through but once I got to the end... let's just say that it being a rewarding and satisfying read.

While there were a few plot holes and unanswered questions, and the characters and dialogue felt underdeveloped to me, I did appreciate and enjoy the slowly unfolding mystery and ending.

I am not sure this is quite a 5 start book. I loved the constant changing world and the imagery of one woman world-hopping through all of them. While it was clear that all was not as it seemed, the way this story resolved was a bit disappointing. Still a fun book, but not as unique and mind-bending as it seemed like it wanted to be at 50%.

I Contain Multitudes by Christopher Hawking is about Trina Bell who hopps through universes and never meets the same person twice until she does. She lives in the 31st century in one day she may pay in cash while the next day she’s paying in strips of paper She has learned to be a survivor from dodging the shadow people to learning how to live in a New World almost every day. She is trying to get to a certain place where she believes she can hopefully stop it and soon she will meet two men one will try to help her stop the universal jumps and the other blames her for it. I won’t pretend to understand every nuance of this story but what I did get from it was truly original entertaining and definitely worth a read. There is nothing more exciting than getting a book that you know is unlike any other book you’ve read and this book definitely belongs to that group. I have never read a book by Christopher Hawkins before but he will definitely be on my list of authors to look for. #NetGalley,#CoronisPublishing, #TheBlindReviewer, #ChristopherHawkins, #IContainMultitudes,

Thank you Christopher Hawkins, NetGalley, and Coronis Publishing for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is a sci-fi thriller about a woman who goes to new worlds every time she wakes up. She has to piece together everything sees with memories she doesn't recognize, with a grief she carries. This book is a mindbender and towards the second half, it gets even crazier with every new reveal. This is typically not my preferred genre, but it worked for a quick palate cleanser between series. There's a bit of horror almost to the way this is told.

I Contain Multitudes is a fascinating dive into the complexity of human nature, blending science, history, and personal stories. The writing is engaging and accessible, making dense topics feel approachable. A few sections get quite detailed, but overall, it’s an enlightening read. Great for curious minds interested in the marvels within us all.

Great prose and an interesting concept. I look forward to reading more from this author. It took me about two chapters to figure out what was happening but I enjoyed my time with this one.

The Objective review:

Let's be honest, I completely misread what this book was about because of my stupid brain. This book is first and foremost a thriller, a very effective one. With a veneer of scifi and multiverse theory. I thought I was in for something quite different and did not finish the book, BUT, not because it's bad, it is actually very good. Trina Bell is a lonely young woman stuck in an endless loop of worlds, constantly changing around her and leaving her lonely, with no one remembering who she is. She is pursued by mysterious entities and must stay ahead of them constantly. But all is about to change when one man remembers.

Simple premise, and a very effective one. Christopher Hawkins transports us on a fast-paced thriller filled with interesting characters and delivering hooks whenever the story threatens to slow down too much. It is a wonderful exploration of loneliness, the complexity of the mind and how it relates to reality. While I may not have gotten everything from it, I encourage those who love thrillers and multiverse stories to pick it up.

The ADHD review:

Triggers Warnings!: Creepy, Shadow Daddies that aren't there for your pleasures, a dad figure, Victorian badonkadonks, multiverse shenanigans and the strongest water sprinklers known to man!

The world keeps changing on Trina faster than a baby can change diapers. She is more lost than a toddler at the mall when a random old dude recognizes her. Things start going sideways real fast and the shadow gang come out of the real shadows to be shady as hell. Get ready for thriller multiverse time, but not the convoluted MCU kind that makes little sense. No, this one has particle accelerators, or at least I think so.

I go into all my books blind so I had no idea what to expect with this one. I’ve been wanting to read Hawkins since I heard the hype about Downpour, but I got a bit nervous in the beginning. I had just come off of another five star read involving shifting realities so when I discovered I Contain Multitudes has some similar themes, I worried I’d be burnt out and wouldn’t enjoy it as much. But this is a fantastic book and I definitely vibed with it. I enjoyed the entire read and the ending was brilliant.

I Contain Multitudes follows Trina. As soon as the reader begins, we discover Trina has no long term memories and is just kind of meandering around. Without any apparent rhyme or reason, her reality constantly shifts. She goes to sleep (or even just blinks at times) in one dimension and awakens in an entirely different reality. There are these strange non luminous shapes and a particularly cruel flesh and bone man following her at every turn. She encounters an individual who can actually remember her from one “Turning” (reality shift) to another and the pacing is breakneck from there as she tries to comprehend her existence.

The characterization is fantastic and the world building is fascinating. Hawkins does an excellent job at crafting these vast possibilities of what could be. There are some constants throughout the different realities and as Hawkins ties things together, your appreciation for the book just grows. Highly recommend if you enjoy faster paced books with mostly affable characters and an excellent, intelligent plot. Great read.

I received a free copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review

One of the strongest points in this sci-fi bender, which contains a psychological side with the human thrill in the need to believe that something bizarre is going on, even by the most cynical Scully, has to be the friendship between the main characters. There’s a chilling antagonist as well. In a series of multiverses [which is handled craftily here], the interaction being the draw keeps this story fresh.

There's something certain people fear above all else. It's anxiety-inducing, the kind that makes your palms sweat and your ears ring and your head feel cottony. But you won't realize it until late in the book, then you'll look askance at the possibility of that world being the "real" world, hoping it's not, but if it is, hoping there's a chance that it won't end up like it could...

I know! That's a terrible review. But I'm trying to tell you nothing because I'm afraid I might inadvertently ruin the book for you, and it is so good.

How to compare this? Let me see if I can do that "this" meets "this" thing that publishers are so fricking fond of...

It's Blake Crouch's Dark Matter meets.... Nope. Can't do that. It will give too much away.

Universe-hopping Trina is shocked when, for the first time in her existence, someone recognizes her from the past: an old man named Colin she encounters in a cafe. The two team up to help Trina escape the nebulous Shadow that is chasing her. I was hoping this story would be interesting, but was disappointed. Trina isn’t so much a character as she is a blank slate for plot to happen to. Colin is mildly interesting, but not enough so to make me enjoy reading this. The strangely meandering prose didn’t really match the high-stakes, fast-paced adventure that was being set up, which made it really hard to track what was actually happening and kept pulling me out of the story.

Starting at a breakneck pace and only occasionally slowing down, I Contain Multitudes by Christopher Hawkins is a beautifully crafted puzzle-box that eschews info dumping background in favor of hiding it in plain sight. In less capable hands this approach can be off-putting or even annoying enough to earn a Did Not Finish result. Instead, I thoroughly enjoyed being pulled along on this thrill ride of a story.

This review is based on an advance copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley. The book will be available on April 30, 2025.

Trina Bell never wakes to the same reality twice. She’s endured countless Turnings – her term for the world shifts – but doesn’t know why they happen or when they began. Trina has an indistinct memory of her grandfather, and flowers, but not who or what she was … before. Even though the worlds before and after a Turning are often similar, no one knows or remembers her.

Well, except the Shadows – black outlines in reality that resemble people and a dog – that’re searching for Trina. The touch of a Shadow is cold and unsettling, and she’s been fortunate to avoid capture as she leads a nomadic, lonely existence, vaguely heading in the direction of a place that may hold some answers. Trina has gotten close to this location before only to find herself hundreds of miles away after the next Turning.

But then a chance encounter with an older gentleman in a coffee shop is like having a bucket of ice water splashed in her face. Against all odds, he remembers Trina after the next Turning, setting in motion a series of twists and turns (and Turnings) building to a wholly unexpected and satisfying conclusion.

I was offered the ARC for this book, and I accepted without even reading the synopsis. Being from this author, I knew it would be good, but I had no idea how deep this one would get. I also have no idea how to write a review for this, because it’s not going to make sense. Still, I’ll try…

Trina Bell is having a problem with the Turnings, which is a short period of time where the world changes and she ends up in different places, at different times. The Shadows are always there, watching, waiting and wanting to get her. Soon, she meets an elderly librarian named Colin Williams, and while having a conversation, there was a Turning. After it happened, Colin was still there, and he remembered her. For the first time in Trina’s memory, someone stayed after a Turning. From then on, she tries to keep herself with Colin as this book takes you through a complete mind-fuck full of flowers, floods, a past and a future, cobblestone roads and flying cars.

See? It makes no sense when I write it, but somehow Christopher Hawkins made this work…yet I still didn’t know where it was going. What is all this for? Is this some cosmic punishment? Does Trina have a power that she hasn’t been able to control? Why does this keep happening? Then I got to the end, and my mind was utterly blown. To say I was shocked is an understatement; I wasn’t just shocked. I was dumbfounded. I was heartbroken. I was astonished. But most surprising of all, I was happy. This was a suspenseful science-fiction horror/thriller story that very few minds could have pulled off. It’s a must-read for fans of the author, and in my opinion, his best work yet. Five stars, because, THAT ENDING.

(Thank you to Coronis Publishing, Christopher Hawkins and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on April 30, 2025.)

This book was SO good! Gotta be honest, I was pretty confused for the first bit trying to figure out just what the heck was going on, and then I was trying to figure out how it was all gonna come together — and I was NOT disappointed! This was like if Stephen King and Blake Crouch had a book baby LOL, and I am totally HERE FOR IT!

Once again, Christopher Hawkins has written a novel I didn’t want to put down. While the primary genre may be science fiction, as the story unfolds, it reveals itself to be something much deeper. On a second read, many elements take on new meanings, making it just as enjoyable—but in a different, more thoughtful way.

The story centers on Trina Bell, who wakes up each day in an alternate version of her world. While these worlds may share certain structures or familiar faces, after each “Turning”—Trina’s word for the event that shifts her between realities—no one remembers her… until someone does.

Driven by a growing sense of urgency, she spends each day searching for a way to stop the Turnings and return to her own world.

Thank you, NetGalley, Coronis Publishing, and Christopher Hawkins for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

I really wanted to enjoy this one. I loved reading Christopher's first book, Downpour. I think part of the reason I'm weird about this one is the genre of the book.

I knew the book was advertised as horror going in, but it gives off more a Sci fi, general fiction, horror book instead. And it was a tad slow in the beginning for me.

I really wish I was more into this book.

I was fortunate to receive an ARC of this book from NetGalley. I would say overall this story is okay, but it didn't live up to my expectations. For me, it started out engaging, then took a roller coaster of ups and downs, with both the pacing and my interest level. The worlds Trina visits during the second half of the book were intriguing, but I felt like I kept reading to chase an explanation (rather than because I was simply enjoying the story), and the one I got requires a lot of assumptions. There is no explanation why Sweet was cognizant of the Turnings and Colin wasn't. This also could have benefited with reasons why Trina's connection/ability with the flowers she learned from her grandfather also gave her the ability to create these worlds on top of worlds, especially because there are tidbits at the conclusion implying the other worlds physically existed for the other characters on some plane. On that same note, if these creations came from Trina's mind, how did she meet some people in multiple other worlds who she hadn't met in her home universe yet? I don't have the most scientific-oriented mind, but I thought the coveted particle accelerator had wasted potential to give us some clues. It wasn't explained how the accident happened, or why Trina got stuck in the cycle of Turnings. Ultimately this story is very original and the author is clearly talented and I may check out some of his other work, but I probably wouldn't read it again.

I Contain Multitudes by Christopher Hawkins is a mind-bending journey through shifting realities, following Trina Bell as she struggles to return to her own world - only to find each new version more unstable than the last.

The world-building is incredibly vivid and imaginative, with new surprises waiting around every corner. At times, though, I felt the story got a bit bogged down in the details. While I appreciated the effort to highlight the subtle differences between each reality, those deep dives sometimes slowed the momentum of the plot.

The characters were a highlight for me, especially in how they evolved across the different worlds. While I didn’t find myself especially attached to Trina, the supporting cast added depth and played off her well. The villain, Sweet, is particularly memorable - chilling and mysterious, with his true nature only revealed in the final chapters. That twist was genuinely satisfying and gave me one of those “Aha!” moments. Honestly, I’m tempted to reread it just to catch all the breadcrumbs I missed the first time around.

Overall, this isn’t a book I would have picked up on my own, and I did find parts of it a bit challenging to get through. But I’m glad I stuck with it—the ending tied things together in a clever and unexpected way that made the whole journey worth it.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A book that builds to a credendo, I Contain Multitudes is a nuanced novel that transforms a slightly rocky start into a fantastic climax.

I will admit I had to push through the book for the first little bit (maybe 10%). Not because I didn’t find the concept very interesting, but because Trina is really hard to get to know as her personality is a little blank (as she doesn’t have a lot of memories of her “real” world) and it’s one of those mimetic texts where the character doesn’t know anything about what it going on, and thus the reader doesn’t either.

The brilliant thing about this book, though, is that it all makes sense. There is a really great twist (or perhaps development is a better word) in the last quarter that ties everything together. It also includes a very specific one of my greatest fears, so when that came about my heart was in my damn throat, and the ending also made me tear up.

And when I say it takes a bit to get into, I don’t mean it was a slog (as the pacing is great); it just didn’t grab my interest in a vice. This is because a lot needs explanation - in every world Trina encounters, she has to describe it to us so we understand what has changed. Once you understand the mechanics of how the multiverse works, the book gains a lot of momentum. This is also because Trina is not only lost in these worlds where it will shift to another (sometimes overnight, sometimes at random), but she’s being hunted by strange beings, and later, another person. And the entire time she’s not really sure what the hell is going on. She has the vaguest idea of getting to the hadron collider for whatever reason, but as the story progresses, the worlds start getting more and more degraded and strange that her goal becomes survival. It reminded me of The Long Earth a bit. Yet, the worlds are not so strange it becomes fantastical - why it doesn’t get wacky relates to the development I mentioned - and there are recurring characters and places so trying to spot what stays and same (and trying to figure out why this is) is a big part of what keeps it engrossing.

The book carries a sombre yet urgent atmosphere, and this is another one of its strengths. It never lets itself go nuts with the multiverse stuff, never gives us a world where everyone is a banana or something, so the tone and tension remain at a tipping point and the entire time I was trying to figure out where it was going, but in a good way. It’s like a mystery puzzle - you don’t know what the image is supposed to be but you need to put it together.

It’s a tightly wrought book that gets tighter and tighter as the story moves along. If you enjoy contemplative sci-fi with a psychological bent, you should check this out.

"I Contain Multitudes" follows young Trina Bell as she grapples with a world that keeps changing all around her...and not just in the metaphorical sense. With each "Turning", Trina finds herself in a new world where sometimes things are only a little different than they were previously, maybe the color of paint in a room has changed or the number of streetlights along the road are fewer. But now, the world is shifting dramatically. One minute things seem relatively normal, but the next "Turning" brings flying cars, and the next "Turning" brings pre-Industrial horse and buggies. And if it wasn't already awkward enough to deal with these changes, she is the only one who notices any of these changes and remembers what came before, even to the point that those she is talking to even as a "Turning" happens forget the beginning of the conversation. Oh, and she is also being hunted by some weird otherworldly shadow creatures across each of these realities, as if she needed one more complication.

Hawkins has written an interesting and engrossing story with a phenomenal twist. The sci fi trappings can be enjoyed on their surface, but the whole story takes on a greater meaning once completed. I will be re-reading the story to see all the elements which I missed reading through the first time simply enjoying the narrative. Having not read any of Hawkins' other works, I will definitely be adding him to my list of authors to follow as I track down his previous works.

A grateful thank you to NetGalley and Coronis Publishing for the opportunity to read this eARC.