Play Book Tag discussion

This felt more like a summer blockbuster than I was expecting. Very commercial, very... buy it in the airport for plane reading type of thing. Very surface level. And I am not against that in general, but if that's what I'm reading, I want it to be fun. This wasn't very fun.

To be fair, fun isn't what it's going for. I guess it's meant to be suspenseful as you work out what's going on, but ... if you're a (view spoiler)[multiverse (hide spoiler)] geek, it's pretty frackin' obvious what's going on!!! And the MC is supposed to be the end-all, be-all of (view spoiler)[multiverse (hide spoiler)] geeks.

I mean, the blurb says:
"Jason soon learns that in this world he’s woken up to, his house is not his house. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born."

Is that not obviously (view spoiler)[multiverse (hide spoiler)]-related??? I thought it was understood from the get-go, but:

**Potential SPOILERS ahead if you don't already know what flavor of Sci-Fi follows that kind of blurb**

Jason, our main dude, is a PhD-level, potential-for-genius kind of scientist whose specific area of study is multiverse-related, and yet it takes him quite a long time to figure out what he's experiencing here. Or at least to *accept* that's what he's experiencing, which is more understandable, but still. The whole first part of the book is clearly structured to see how long it can keep the reader from figuring that out, and WHY?

So whatever, he finally gets on board, then blahblahblah, and now we're at 40% before he realizes something I've known since Chapter Two. Something I just took for granted that he'd figured out along with the general multiverse discovery a few chapters ago BECAUSE HE SHOULD HAVE. Instantaneously. And now it's supposed to be this second big revelation. 

Y'all. There is no parallel universe in which I am a physics genius, but I *am* probably a scifi dork in most of them, and apparently that puts me a leg up on this guy. And it's not just me. He decides to let several people in on this secret during the course of the book, and they all manage to almost instantaneously understand what's going on.

Don't get me wrong, it's a very easy read, and there are definitely moments when he put into words certain feelings/experiences that I appreciated seeing described so simply.

I’m struck for a fleeting moment by the overwhelming sense of loss. Not grief or pain, but something more primal. A realization and the terror that follows it—terror of the limitless indifference surrounding us.

"The limitless indifference"!! Yes. And it is terrifying. And there are maybe five of these gems buried somewhere in these 350 pages.

Luckily, at the 68% mark, something genuinely interesting happens, and it provides actual suspense for the rest of the book.

Still, if you're looking for multiverse travel, I'd skip this and go for The Space Between Worlds instead.