Synopsis

You may win $1,000,000. You will judge a man of murder.

An eccentric scientist tells you he can read your mind and offers to prove it in a high-stakes wager. A respected college professor exacts impassioned, heat-of-the-moment revenge on his wife’s killer—a week after her death—and you’re on the jury. Take a Turing test with a twist, discover how your future choices might influence the past, and try your luck at Three Card Monte. And while you weigh chance, superstition, destiny, intuition, and logic in making your decisions, ask yourself: are you responsible for your actions at all? Choose wisely—if you can.

Review

I have never read a book before where you get to direct the story (my stepson calls it a “create your own adventure” book). Apparently this isn’t anything new (except to me) but I really enjoyed being able to choose the next path for the protagonist. I even chose one path and then went back and changed it to see what happened next that was different. I didn’t do this often, just a few times to see what would happen and then at the end (but of course there could have been multiple endings based on earlier choices). And because I read it on my Kindle (vs a book), it took me directly to the next part of the story based on my choice vs flipping pages.

I thought that part of the wording was strange…but now that I reflect on the book I realize that I am the main character/protagonist and it now makes more sense. I didn’t quite get the “you” when reading the book. I mentioned I had not read this type of book before!

The story itself is quite interesting – you start off choosing whether to be part of a science experiment that can decipher your decision based on a certain circumstance in a weeks time. So about half of your choices are based on whether you choose one or two boxes. The other portion of the book is that you have been chosen to sit on a jury for a murder trial and how you view the facts of that case leads you to make other choices when deciding the next path of your adventure.

I don’t know how the author created all the different scenarios or how many might intersect but it had to have taken a lot of time to write out each story and decide where to place the breaks for decisions by the reader.

I do wish the book had been longer or perhaps had a few more twists, but I imagine this was pretty labor intensive as written! I hope the author writes more books like this and perhaps if he notates them as a “choose your own adventure” book it might draw more people and they will understand that it is not like your normal book.

We give it 5 paws up!

About the Author

Greg Hickey was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1985. After graduating from Pomona College in 2008, he played and coached baseball in Sweden and South Africa. He is now a forensic scientist, endurance athlete, and award-winning writer. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Lindsay.

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