The 22 Murders of Madison May

Fast paced and interesting. Nothing exceptional but definitely highly entertaining. I also loved the ending a lot.

DNF at 65%, this one was recommended as being in the same vein as Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and I can see why but it lacks the great pacing and intensity that made Dark Matter so good. After talks of muesli, hating someone's beard, and swiping on Tinder, I just can't be bothered to continue.

No Rating.

Summary: When reporter Felicity Staples is assigned to cover the murder of real estate agent Madison May, she can’t help but notice that there is something odd about this case. It isn’t until a run-in with two individuals she believes to be connected to the case—one of whom may even be the killer—that Felicity’s reality is turned upside down, and she learns that Madison has, in fact, been killed multiple times across as many different realities.

I found the book to be incredibly interesting and thought-provoking, but I didn't love the ending.

Drags a bit, very repetitive, ending was satisfying. 

Strong characters, although a bit more development of Hugo would've been nice.

As I got near the end of the book, I realized that Maddie was going to save herself and that really made the book for me.

This was interesting. Somewhat confusing, but interesting.

A clever and taughtly composed thriller with great characters.

I'm gobsmacked!

This is a serial killer thriller hung on a science fiction framework. It feels a lot like a script treatment or a film adaptation. Maybe that's been put in my mind because so much of the book deals with Hollywood and the acting profession, but it's also because the story is all about hustling you along from scene to scene without stopping to dig into anything lest it falls apart. Barry's previous novel Lexicon had a really interesting idea at its core, one that was considered and worked through logically in the story, but this one is much more handwavey, and a lot of the character motivations and mechanics of the macguffin don't stack up when you look at them too closely. Barry raises some interesting questions about the ethics of the multiverse hopping, but then doesn't even really try to answer them.

For all that, it's a snappy and entertaining read, and if you take it on its own terms it's pacy and fun, but I wish it had tried to be a little more