Infinite by Brian Freeman

 

Dylan Moran's life couldn't be much worse than it is at the moment.  His wife, Karly, was recently killed in a car accident while Dylan was driving, drowned in their trapped car that Dylan barely escaped.  He had met her after another accident, one in which his best friend had died.  That's a lot of trauma to handle.  Dylan is desperate to find a way to process all that has happened, especially the part he hasn't told anyone.  After the accident, he saw something unreal; he saw himself in the crowd of bystanders.  Not someone who looked like him, him in the flesh.

Dylan goes to see a therapist.  She introduces himself to the concept of alternate worlds and suggests that the man he saw may have come from such a place.  Dylan is skeptical but agrees to try the therapy.  He is transported to another world and realizes that there is an alternate world created by each decision he makes.  There are multiple alternative worlds and multiple versions of himself.  Most of them he isn't interested in; they are boring men just plodding through their existences.  But there is the man he saw after the accident and he knows this man he must engage.  The other Dylan is a killer and his only desire is to kill more people and pin the crimes on Dylan in his world.  

As Dylan fights to find and put a stop to his alternate, he finds pieces of the traumatic world he has left.  He finds out the secrets behind Karly's distance before the accident, the reason his friend was killed, and his own possible life choices that would result in very different lives.  He is slowly healing but as he pursues his doppelganger, it is clear that it will be a kill or be killed scenario. Which Dylan will survive?

This is a novel that requires the reader to have a strong ability to suspend disbelief.  The idea of alternative worlds with alternates created by every decision is a new concept to many and may not be believable to them.   Dylan is also a character it is difficult to have empathy for, his life a series of selfish decisions that bring him an unfulfilled life.  Yet the author finds a way to end the book in a manner that provides hope going forward.  This book is recommended for thriller readers.