Every time a good book concept is wasted on an author who completely beefs it, an angel loses her wings.

The characters weren't just unlikeable but easily hateable; protagonist Ethan is bland and a transparent self-insert of the author. It's honestly kind of hilarious how much effort was put into making him seem "different" than all the other Silicon Valley tech heads (No, really, guys, he's so unique! He has bare minimum empathy and likes coffee and art, how eccentric!) when in fact he's just as dull as the rest of them. Nora is a weed-smoking manic pixie dream girl with a chronic case of man-writing-woman syndrome (ew). These two and every other character were boring and uninteresting.; who would've thought it takes more than giving a character two hobbies to build well-rounded, worth-reading-about characters.

The writing was weird. Much like the parallel universe described in the book, everything felt a little... off. In nearly every scene I was perplexed by either the lack of detail in things that mattered or by the insistence on spending too many words on things that genuinely did not matter, making large stretches of this book so boring they were borderline unreadable. This made the pacing weird, obviously. Pretty much everything that happens in this book happens in the last 50 pages, which of course felt rushed. 

This book was a chore to get through and I wish I'd stopped reading earlier. The characters failed to get my attention and sympathy. Why should I care that

Henry's daughter is missing when she's not characterized? When we only get implied whispers of Henry's alleged distress?

Why should I care that

Nora's missing when that means I thankfully don't have to read about her anymore?

Cool concept, though. I think what kept me reading was the hope it would all come together in some profound, interesting way. I shouldn't have been surprised it didn't.