Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for kindly giving me access to an e-arc of this book!

It took me a looong time to read this books for two major and interrelated reasons. First, I've been feeling quite tired which impacts my reading stamina/speed and secondly, the writing style of the book was at times opaque making it more demanding to grasp. What I mean is that it sometimes felt like this books was written by someone well versed in computer sciences and physics who expected their readers to have the same knowledge. The book was told almost in short hand with language I was unfamiliar with and gave little explanation to bridge the gap between myself and the story. This decision was positive in that is made the world feel real and the characters seemed authentic to me. But it did mean I felt alienated and never fully grasped what was happening. I usually don't mind this when I can tell it was intentional but in this case I'm not sure it was.

I loved Martin and his found family. I thought this book shone in its use of characters which I immediately connected with and in its relationships. I wish we had gotten to spend more time with them. To that point, I found the pacing more staccato than I would prefer. The story moved from plot point to plot point too quickly leaving little room for the fallout of previous events. It felt too fast paced leaving me with no real sense of time or space because we were already on to the next thing. I wonder if the book would have benefited from fewer plot points to give the story a chance to breathe.

The love story was adorable but again I wish the pacing had been a bit different allowing for the reader to see these feelings and relationships blossom. It felt like much of it happened off-page or in passing vignettes montage-style. I would have liked to see the butterfly moments happen and to witness the early stages of the characters developing feelings for each other. That would have made me feel invested in their stories and in whether or not they got the happy ending they deserved.

Overall I'm glad I stuck it out and finished this book because the story was cool and the world itself fascinating. I'm look forward to whatever the author writes next!

Thankyou to NetGalley and Bold Strokes books for this arc. I am sadly disappointed by this one but I’m definitely the outlier as the reviews have been fantastic for this book. For me there was just so much going on that I didn’t understand and the romance, which is definitely central in the book, just felt unbelievable. Martin, our MC is working for an agency closing rifts in the multiverse and the book is kind of about conspiracy’s with the multiverse becoming unstable and the Mandela effect. I liked most of the characters but I found them a bit all over the place and hard to follow individually, there’s some fab rep in the book, Martin is a trans gay black man who has two lovers aka polyamory, there’s a bunch of other gay characters, and a character who uses they/them pronouns also. There’s also mental health rep and autism rep too. The story was interesting enough to keep me wanting to read it and the ideas were solid I just couldn’t get fully on board with it and struggled to read the story honestly. I also didn’t really like the romance as it felt super rushed and I honestly don’t understand why the two love interests liked Martin, I just couldn’t get on board with it. Polyamory yes! But in this book I just didn’t love the mc so the relationships didn’t work for me.
I’d totally recommend this for the sci-fi fans out there or anyone smarter than me tbh as I struggled to understand all the science and I think that impacted my reading experience a lot. I think that people will get a lot out of this book, it’s got a lot of humour and sassiness which will appeal to a wide variety of people also, it just didn’t work for me overall.

The multiverse is a weird and wonderful concept. It’s actually several concepts stacked on top of one another wearing a trenchcoat. In One Verse Multi, Sander Santiago plays with some of those concepts to create a universe-hopping mystery involving polyamorous love interests, evil corporate aspirations, and dramatic confrontations. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this book, and I don’t think I could have predicted what I got. I wish I had loved this book more, because it has so much to recommend it!

Thanks to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the eARC!

Martin Logan King works for the Multi-verse Protection Corporation (MVP). Formerly a rift-closure tech, Martin has now joined a new research team formed by MVP to investigate a unique event. The team discovers in the course of their investigation that not all is as it seems at MVP, that the founders are up to some shady shit, and Martin in particular takes it upon himself to investigate further and take action. The fate of the entire multiverse hangs in the balance, but can Martin save it without sacrificing the two men he loves?

Let’s talk about representation! One reason I wanted to love this book more than I did is because of how cleverly Santiago works in diverse representation. Santiago himself is a queer, trans BIPOC writer, and so he writes Martin’s character with a very authentic voice: Martin is a Black, gay trans man, and a significant part of the book is his self-discovery of polyamorous attraction as well. To be clear, I’m not praising One Verse Multi for the way it checks a lot of boxes—that’s not what matters to me when it comes to representation. It’s the quality that matters here, but I also wanted to remark upon the quantity of identities in play because intersections matter too. It matters that Martin is Black and trans, that he’s gay and polyamorous, etc. We can’t separate any one of these identities from the others.

In general, I really liked Martin. I liked his straightforward attitude and bravery. He’s heroic but not in a bombastic sense; occasionally he overreaches (and regrets it), but in general he has a combination of charisma and cunning that gets him through. I like that he took the fight to the enemy, for reasons I will discuss below. This, combined with all his identities, is why we need more protagonists like this!

In addition to Martin, there’s a non-binary characters and several other queer characters of various ethnicities. But perhaps even better than that is the supportive nature of the worldbuilding. Martin’s colleagues (aside from the bad guys) are endlessly supportive. Even when they disagree with him and argue, they always give him a chance to explain. Even the bad guys respect his identities; his queerness is never a source of jokes, slurs, insults, etc. It’s never up for comment. In this respect, One Verse Multi feels a lot like Star Trek: The Next Generation: the team is just vibing, and they don’t always see eye-to-eye, but they will trust each other’s judgment and listen.

It’s so fucking wholesome and I love it.

As you might know, I’m not a huge fan of romance, so I tend not to enjoy or comment on those subplots. For what it’s worth, I didn’t mind the romantic subplot here. I liked that it was polyamorous instead of a love triangle, and that it develops in a slow-burn-to-sudden-simmer kind of way. Santiago carefully hangs a lampshade on the stalker-like nature of Martin’s initial observations of Titus. Honestly, Titus and Lucas both seem like great guys, and I wish everyone all the best.

So the characters in this books are fantastic and a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the plot. This was where One Verse Multi nearly lost me: it drags. A lot. I kept looking at the percentage read in my Kindle, wondering why the story was advancing so slowly. There is no sense of urgency to the pacing for the first part of the book. Once we get a better sense of who the antagonists are, that does change—and to be fair, there are certainly some dramatic and tense moments. Once Santiago gets to the action, he’s great at writing it. It just takes forever to get there!

Similarly, the actual nature of the mystery was ho-hum to me. It boils down to predictable corporate greed, just enhanced with access to a multiverse. I don’t require that a mystery be totally unpredictable to me, but I do like to be a little surprised by the outcomes, and I didn’t get that here.

So my overall verdict? One Verse Multi is one of the most wholesome and satisfying books I have read in a long time when it comes to the characters and romance. On this strength alone I would recommend it if that is what you are after. On the other hand, if you’re coming to this for an intense mystery, I’m less certain you’ll be satisfied.

I struggled a bit to finish this book. Yet I am sure there are people who would love it.

The good: lots of rep. Black, trans, queer, poly, non-binary.... it's all in here. I did also enjoy the premise.

The bad: it's very technical, and often confusing. There are way too many scenes where half a dozen characters sit around with a whiteboard talking about how their science stuff works. I was confused a lot about what was even going on, which characters were which, stuff like that. On the other hand, I was also often bored. I wanted people to go and do things instead of discussing the vibration frequencies of different universes while sitting around eating chips.

Overall, if you're eager for queer SF books with queer romance sideplots, go ahead and give it a try. But if you want either lots of action, or lots of feelings, this might not be the book for you.

Sander Santiago has written a book that you will have to read in one sitting. The idea of the multiverses and having versions of ourselves out there in different verses is amazing and interesting. The evolvement of the characters and their relationships progressed in a loving, nurturing way. One Verse Multi allows you to imagine every character and I love when a book can be made into a movie as I read. This is one of those books, it would be a phenomenal movie all thanks to Sander Santiago. You will fall in love with the team.

I loved this book! The concept, the characters, the romance, the plot twists - they were all wonderful!

One Verse Multi follows Martin, a black gay trans man who works for a company call Multi-Verse Protection Corporation (MVP for short), and his found family while they try to save the multi verse from verse-hopping bad guys. They discover one of Martin’s love interests may be the answer they need.

It took me a little while to get into this book, mostly because there was so much new terminology and I was getting somewhat confused, but once I was in, it was such a wild ride!

The world(s) building is phenomenal. We enter so many different verses and each one feels unique and oh so real. The characters are all incredibly lovable (the ones we’re supposed to love at least) and the relationships that build throughout the book feel so genuine and they just made me want to hang out with these characters.

Another thing that I loved about this book is I didn’t see any of the twists coming (and not in a “what the heck? There was nothing leading up to this at all!” Kinda way). Normally I can guess at least vaguely what the big twists or endings will be early on in books, but this one was such a pleasant surprise.

I’m giving this book 4 stars instead of 5 (it’s actually probably more like 4 1/2) only because I was pretty confused for the first like 1/5th of the book. I wish that beginning portion would have been less about the experiment and all the scientific terminology and more about just getting into the world building, story, and characters.

I would definitely recommend this book to any sci-fi lovers and am super interested in reading more of Sander Santiago’s books!

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and statements are my own.

One Verse Multi is a sci fi romance starring Martin King and the adventures of the MVP, Multi-verse Protection Corporation. A like-earth sci fi story about multiple, co-existing universes and the people who maek them up. Martin starts off as an e mployee on an exclusive MVP team that seems to be studying multi-verse persons, but quickly turns into a mystery of corporate greed and the universe itself.

It's hard to describe it without spoilers, but what I enjoy about the story is that just as the plot seems to be at a lull, some new twist or circumstance, some new character development will turn the story on its head. Each fourth of the book almost felt like it's own story. The ups and downs can sometimes create lulls that can seem to drag, but the character development not only individually amongst Tidas, Luca and Martin and the whole crew, but them collectively, is what really drives this along.

The sci fi technicality can get heady at points, but for the most part is very approachable by both an older and younger audience. The suspension of disbelief is never broken for me personally and watching the romance develop while trying to figure out what on eath was going on was a nice twist. Other than some of the aforementioned flaws, this is a very solid read with some varied, diverse representation that brings full-fledged and developed characters you want to see more of. I recommend for any sci fi, fantasy or people looking for more queer/BIPOC reads. Not too heavy or violent, good amount of fluff.

One Verse Multi is my favourite kind of sci-fi. It was clever, it was witty, it was insightful… just a glorious time all round!

Martin King works for MVP (Multi-Verse Protection Corporation), a company that researches the multi-verse and makes sure that things don’t go wrong. After he discovers that the guy he likes may be the key to saving the multi-verse from destruction caused by money-hungry corporations, he and his colleagues are thrown into a cross-universe adventure.

I LOVED this book from the absolute get-go. I was instantly drawn into the story, and every time I put the book down I was counting down until I could next pick it up again. It was genuinely funny without shying away from big topics and themes, and despite being fantastical felt down-to-earth and grounded.

I do want to give a special shout-out to the world-building (or, multi-world-building?) because it was so thorough and well-thought-out that it felt real. There were some really nice touches, such as the idea of Mandela effects being transferences from other universes. It was all so cohesive that you never doubted the science for a second without being bombarded with background information.

The true heroes of this book though were the characters. There was a real found-family going on in this, with a great ensemble cast, and great leads in Martin and his two love interests, Luca and Tidus. It was a really nice balance of the sci-fi plot and these three trying to figure out their relationships alongside the multi-verse nearly ending. This book is unapologetically queer and diverse, with a Black, trans and gay main character, a polyamorous relationship, a non-binary side character and a racially diverse ensemble.

This book is a hidden gem, showcasing science fiction at its best.

I received a free copy from the publisher for review. All opinions are my own.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Content Warnings: injury description, mild panic attacks, capitalism unfortunately

BLACK! POLY! TRANS! GAY! And the multiverse?! Yeah, this one’s for me.

One Verse Multi is a dope sci-fi novel about a Martin, a black trans man and his found family/work colleagues literally saving the multiverse from evil capitalists. Sure, it’s more nuanced than that if you wanted a detailed summary you would read the actual summary. You’re here for the good stuff:

This was a fantastic read! It took me a few short chapters to really get into it, mostly because of the new terminology which I’m notoriously terrible with for a sci-fi fan. So what we’ve got is the casual, modern, colloquial first-person voice of our main character Martin. Because the book is so dialog heavy I frequently forgot it was even written in first person (which is great for me because I don’t typically love that perspective). The pacing felt really good, totally natural especially with all of the universe hopping.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot because of how much fun I had watching it unfold, but I would be remiss to not mention the similarities between this and The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson. The way the two stories are handled is completely different- this one puts a lot of emphasis on our protagonist needing his friends, his found family, his lovers. And the romance itself here, while not the main plot, is pretty darn important.

And gosh is the romance great. This isn’t the kind of polyamorous story where they were poly already and they’re just going it- no, we do get a bit of that ‘is this ok?’ and that’s perfectly fine. In fact, the communication between these three is amazing. There aren’t any easily avoidable misunderstandings- Martin really just comes out and say, ‘hey I’m into both of y’all. Is that ok?’ And they talk about it! What?! I know, it’s wild. Their relationship doesn’t magically come together at the end- the three of them really are working for it in the background and occasional forefront of some really important multiverse-business. We actually get to see these guys in their relationship too, navigating it, being in it and having real life problems as well. No fade to black, no we’ll be together after the multiverse war. And the three of them are so very good, so different, so freaking cute. I could gush about the way romance is handled here forever. I mean, sure there could have been more kissing but that’s just personal—

If I absolutely had to pick something I didn’t like, it would be the frequency in which I encountered the word “quantum” in the first quarter of the book. Maybe it’s just me, but I need to be eased into quantum level science.

At the end of the day I’ve recommended this book to everyone who will listen. I did, in fact, get this as an ARC (thanks NetGalley) with no requirement to leave a review, but I’m doing this and gushing because I want more science fiction like this and I need more science fiction from Sander Santiago.

One Verse Multi is a great book! The premise is simple: there's a multiverse, there's a company that make sure it doesn't fly apart, and there's a protagonist who uncovers some some stranger shenanigans and has a mystery to solve. Along the way there is science, a seemingly infinite number of men named Tidus, a large dog, some action, some adventure, and a love story.

What the heck isn't to love about this book?

I very much loved the characters in the book. Sander Santiago did a great job if creating a super diverse cast of characters. Martin King, the hero of the story, is a gay trans man. People of color are the norm not the exception. Heck, even goths are represented.

The plot moves quickly There are twists and turns of every type. It's an inventive book that was super fun to read. I finished it in a day and now want to read more from this author!