Here is the pitch: Black Mirror meets Sliding Doors meets Groundhog’s Day meets Pretty Little Mistakes meets Life After Life meets…well, you get the idea. This is Shepherd’s third speculative fiction novel, and although its premise is solid, it is not exactly groundbreaking. It uses a reality show frame and multiverse theory to create an adult version of a “Choose Your Adventure” book. The actual storyline is pretty straightforward: Since just about every aspect of Marsh’s life is a shambling mountain of regrets, she would like to be able to go back in time and fix her mistakes. Fortunately, in her world, there is a game show for that. Through manipulation of “quantum mechanics,” the creators of All This and More can arrange unlimited opportunities that allow a contestant to relive important transitional moments. Within this scheme, Marsh can make different life choices or just tweak tiny details until she is satisfied with her life. She begins with conservative alterations, but soon finds herself in increasingly outrageous and improbable scenarios. After many iterations, Marsh begins to notice some disturbing irregularities and glitches, leading her to suspect that she is not solely guiding the process. The reader has the opportunity to occasionally “help” Marsh decide by selecting among offered options, following the text to a specified location. Shepherd’s book is an example of how the alternate-universe plot can become tiresome, with required repetition and inherent logical inconsistencies. The jumps and re-workings get harder for the reader to track, the effect is numbing, and it encourages skimming— despite the author’s efforts to incorporate the fantastic and outré. Similar to those classic CYO adventures, what results is a disjointed narrative that sacrifices depth to accommodate a gimmicky design. ( )

What if you could go back to moments in your history and make a different choice? Because of the butterfly effect, even small changes can have ripple effects that result in major differences for the future.

Marsh gets such a chance when she is picked to be the contestant on Season 3 of "All This and More," a reality TV show that, thanks to the technology known as "quantum bubbling," allows her to go back in time and make different choices.

This new technology is very vaguely explained, so the reader must have a large capacity for suspension of disbelief here regarding this plot point, which undergirds the entire novel. Once you get past that, the story proceeds smoothly. Most of the book consists of Marsh making change after change to her history, which leads her down a different path from the one her original life took. I found the different iterations of her life story a little confusing to follow, but if you let go of the need to keep it straight in your head it kind of just flows, one episode to the next.

Complications arise that throw a monkey wrench into Marsh's story as well as adds a twist and suspenseful story line, and towards the end the plot picks up speed.

There is a "pick your ending" element to this novel, and the author tells us in the beginning that the reader can choose to read straight through (which I did) or choose various decisions for Marsh and take a wilder ride.

There are some plot points that don't make sense and don't resolve (what happened to the Chrysalis pill?) so it's best for the reader to just enjoy the ride, the concept, and the adventure. ( )