The Scary Reviews

Genre: Thriller
Length: 341 Pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release date: July 12, 2022
Synopsis: “You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

My Review-

Wow, just wow, this was a thriller that never stopped. The highest respect to Blake Crouch for writing a book that pushed my mental understanding to it’s limits. I’ve been a fan since reading Dark Matter a few years back and love the science fiction Blake Crouch dreams up. The technology and science of Upgrade mimics real life, and here that is scary as all hell. As with many, if not all, of Blake Crouch’s novels, he creates a futuristic world that is mesmerizing and fills it with great characters that you can’t help but love.

The main character in Upgrade is Logan, and his character arc is nothing short of amazing. Imagine having your natural abilities modified to make you smarter, faster, etc. What would you do if one day you could remember every conversation you had, or figure out complex math equations. The possibilities are endless and intriguing. Logan has several upgrades that are more and at the same time less than what he expected or could imagine. All of the pluses of an upgrade are met with an equal number of minuses.

While Logan puzzles out the mystery of who, why and how such changes to his genetic code are possible, it become clear humanity may be in great danger. Natural resources have become scarce and the environment is a mess. Upgrade takes many changes in direction and working to solve the case was a challenge. I love a book that makes me think, holds my attention and won’t let me put the book down. Upgrade was all of this and more, I recommend it highly.

Link to purchase Upgrade

Blake Crouch, Biography-

Blake Crouch is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. His novels include the New York Times bestseller Dark Matter, and the internationally bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy, which was adapted into a television series for FOX. Crouch also created the TNT show Good Behavior, based on his Letty Dobesh novellas. His latest book is Recursion, a sci-fi thriller about memory, and will be published in June 2019. He lives in Colorado.

To learn more about what he is doing, check out his website, http://www.blakecrouch.com, follow him on Twitter – @blakecrouch1 – or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/blakecrouchauthor