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How I discovered this book: It was submitted to Rosie Amber's Review Team, of which I am a member.
This is a most unusual and interesting novel, categorised on Amazon under 'metaphysical and visionary', and 'time travel'.
George is your average American middle-aged husband and father, unstimulated by his job, with a marriage that's lost its joy and the usual teenage children angst. On his morning journeys to work he gets to know the curious Shiloh, who philosophises about life, the universe and everything, and asks him to beta test a new app for an Apple watch. There is, of course, more to both Shiloh and the app than meet the eye.
Meanwhile, back in his normal life, George struggles with family problems ~ his daughter has a bad car accident, his son is being difficult and secretive, and his job is giving him headaches. Soon, he realises that Shiloh and his mysterious app are giving him a completely different perspective on life, introducing him to the idea of parallel universes.
I loved the first half of this book. I really like the author's writing style; George and his family are very real, and the narrative is darkly comic, interesting and highly readable, with lots of popular cultural references; I liked that each chapter has the name of a song. I also loved the philosophy, ideas and views of Shiloh, many of which echoed my own, though this was not the only reason I was toying with 5* for the book at this stage. I read the first 50% almost in one go.
The quality of the writing does not falter throughout, but at around 60% my attention started to waver. Story threads that seemed interesting were quickly resolved and everything was hunky dory in George's world for quite a while - nice for George, and, indeed, this served a purpose for the outcome of the story, but it was not that interesting to read about. Without giving too much in the way of spoilers, the app means that George relives days in his past life. He also has vivid dreams. I thought the dream sequences were far too long, slowing the progress of the story down, and the relived days from the past could have been written more succinctly, especially when a day was lived more than once. Also, Shiloh's long explanations became longer (or maybe it was just me), and I thought there was too much explanatory dialogue, generally.
In the second half is a tragic episode which I thought was well done; all the threads lead to the outcome, as Shiloh reveals his purpose; sadly, by the end I felt less involved with the story. The whole idea is a terrific one, and Mr Kuhn clearly has much talent, but I felt that the second half was written less with the reader in mind than the first.
My overall rating is based on the fact that I'd give the first half 5* and the second half 3*. It's a good book, and readers who are particularly interested in the metaphysical and visionary will probably enjoy it very much indeed.
Thank you Terry.
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