The Story: I'm going to keep the details limited here or it will spoil one of the story's many twists and turns. Sam and Roger are two security guards in a dying mall with only a few stores remaining. They stumble across a mysterious stranger named Diane who appears from nowhere, out of the shuttered recesses of an abandoned toy store. Then, all hell breaks loose. Reality-shattering type of stuff. Buckle up for a wild ride. It's a blinding homage to 80s nostalgia and Choose Your Own Adventure books. To be clear: this is not a choose your own adventure story itself. Not really. But sorta. You have to read it to experience it. It's wild, and mind-bending and you never know what's coming next. Flipping the script is the name of the game with this story. And the 80s references are everywhere. Think Stranger Things and Adventures in Babysitting, all stuck in a mall with crazy glitchy stuff going on. Literal photos of department store catalog pages are interspersed throughout the chapters, sometimes along with captions taken from a particular product. Some chapters even have links where you can jump to an earlier chapter (like The Basement or The Index) and on an ereader they actually work, just like a choose your own adventure. My Review: I've never read a book anything like this. The prose comes at you quick and fast, like jabs in a boxing match. Punchy. Little. Fragments. All of it, practically the whole book, even the dialogue. And it works remarkably well, lending the novel a fresh and unique voice. The dialogue ping-pongs between the characters, lickety-split, and it feels real. The blending of the Choose Your Own Adventure style is simply brilliant. The way some pages were actually linked (when I read it on a Kindle) was a clever touch I've never seen done before. Yet at the same time, this is NOT a choose your own adventure. The plot continues just like a regular novel, which I'm thankful for. That reminds me: Make sure you keep reading after the final acknowledgements at the end. I almost stopped and would have tragically missed some huge stuff. I only have two minor gripes: First, a scene where Sam is chased into an arcade and he escapes via some very creative thinking. It seemed downright silly to me, to the point where I was disappointed. Second, the dialogue's strength is also it's weakness: There are places where it's so bouncy, I lost track of who said what. A few more strategically placed contextual clues, action beats, etc would have been helpful. Not a lot! Just a few. Even so, I'm extremely impressed. The author has created something very special with this work—not a novel, but a true experience. The catalog imagery along with the frequent "Be Kind, Rewind" stickers create a clever juxtaposition against Diane's apocalyptic flashbacks. It's a feeling you get when reading it. I particularly enjoyed the punchy dialogue, especially at the beginning. My favorite scene is one of the very first where Roger is defending his penchant for hoarding guns. I strongly suspect my own writing will be better having read it. Not everyone will like this book or understand it. I feel like it's the kind of thing only a self-published author can get away with. If you enjoy the 80s nostalgia from Stranger Things and can roll with some second person POV, you should give it a shot. You won't ever forget this book. 5 stars.

Darby Harn takes what could be a gimmick - re-creating the structure of a Choose Your Own Adventure book - and turns it into something thematically richer, using the CYOA format to think about the loops we find ourselves in during our lives, the way we end up in ruts, and the way we so often want to retreat and try it all over again. It’s rich, compelling stuff, complete with a doozy of a twist that caught me completely unawares. There are a couple of small things that I wish were a touch clearer, but those are minor touches, given what a great experience the book as a whole is. Moving, thoughtful, imaginative, and thematically compelling - as ever, more people should be reading Harn’s work, and this one is no exception.