This is the second novel by Crouch that approaches the question of multiple universes and timelines, but this time from the standpoint of neuroscience and memory.
In this story, the mechanism for traversing multiple lives lived (or periods of lives) has to do with an invention that allows a person to jump back to a point in their memory where something emotional happened, and then restart their lifetime story from that point, but with their old memories intact (thus allowing them to consciously make different decisions, and become different people).
The "life loop" is a plot that has been similarly explored in other stories. Groundhog Day is probably the most famous example in film (with its very short "one-day" timeline loop), but it is also the basis for two earlier sci-fi novels which I highly recommend, Replay (1986), by Ken Grimwood, and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (2014), by Claire North.
This book is another worthy contribution to the time loop literary tradition, but one in which there is more effort made to come up with a technological explanation for what is happening to the characters. That focuses more attention on the wider problem of the unintended consequences of the new technologies we humans keep inventing, and the massively destructive effects they can have on our happiness and social stability. Recommended.
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