When the SWAT team gives the all-clear and Logan Ramsay steps into the basement, he has no idea that everything’s about to change. Then there’s the hiss of aerosol. The explosion. The shrapnel punctures his hazmat gear. Logan wakes up to find himself in a hospital bed, attended by doctors in their own hazmat suits, his wife and daughter looking on from behind the glass. The doctors say he’s been infected by a virus–one designed not to make him sick, but to modify his very genetic structure.
Upgrade is Blake Crouch’s latest novel. It revolves around Logan Ramsay an agent from the Gene Protection Agency (GPA). The story takes place in an undetermined future. A future where the GPA has outlawed all gene editing and gene modification, so it tracks the development and use of all genetic research to prevent it from being used against humanity.
In this world, private and university-based research has been banned, so scientists who insist on following this line of research are forced to work illegally.
The book starts with Logan in the process of raiding an illegal lab when an explosion exposes him to a gene-modifying virus.
When Logan wakes up from the accident, he realizes that something is different in his body. His memory, cognition, and overall intelligence seem to have drastically improved. Under suspicion of having self-injected the gene-modifying virus and facing imprisonment, Logan sets out to look for answers.
I have read several of Blake Crouch’s books, but I have to admit that this one just didn’t do it for me. It is a very fast-paced thriller and the premise is interesting, however, the techno-jargon felt a little overdone and could potentially turn off some readers.
Upgrade is scheduled to be published on July 12th, 2022. I want to thank Ballantine Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Format: Kindle- Advanced Reader’s Copy
ASIN: B09R21165T
Source: Netgalley
Rating: 3 stars
Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Daisy Ellery’s pies have a secret ingredient: The magical ability to avenge women done wrong by men…The first time Daisy Ellery killed a man with a pie, it was an accident. Now, it’s her calling. Daisy bakes sweet vengeance into her pastries, which she and her dog Zoe deliver to the men who’ve done dirty deeds to the town’s women. But if she can’t solve the one crime that’s not of her own baking, she’ll be out of the pie pan and into the oven.
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
Spending her thirtieth birthday alone is the last thing that dating columnist Cleo wanted, but she is going on a self-coupling quasi-sabbatical–at the insistence of her boss–in the name of re-energizing herself and adding a new perspective to her column. The remote Irish island she’s booked is a far cry from London, but at least it’s a chance to hunker down in a luxury cabin and indulge in some quiet, solitary self-care while she figures out her next steps in her love life and her career.
Have you heard about the couple on Maple Drive?
Life-long friends, they went their separate ways. Now they are together again, though each holds secrets from the others in his heart. They speak of a world shadowed with rumors of war. They speak of tales with strange monsters, creatures of myth, creatures of legend. They do not speak of their secrets. Not then. Not until a chanced encounter with a beautiful, sorrowful woman who bears a magical crystal staff draws the companions deeper into the shadow forever changing their lives and shaping the fate of the world.
The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town.Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.
A Wondrous Bookshelf 