'Welcome to Forever' is very likely to feature on my favourite books for 2024.

A sweeping, very complex novel focused on the human experience, Tavares uses a futuristic setting to explore the concept of what humanity might mean in a world of advanced technology, and what 'memory' is when it can so easily be changed and manipulated. Right from the start - "The staff gave me a picture of me and of someone I'm supposed to remember" - the reader is immersed in a world of memory editing: a utopia with a fracturing sense of self.

Intense, ironically memorable, and wonderfully raw, I will definitely be recommending this.

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This book is one to read if you’re after gorgeous writing. The prose is immersive, with sentences that invite you to sink into them and reflect.

The character of Fox is rich in complexity. Each chapter peels back another layer of his personality, revealing depth and nuance. However, Gabe doesn’t receive the same level of development. While this is understandable—since we spend far more time in Fox’s mind than we do with Gabe in the present—it still makes their dynamic feel uneven.

Each chapter and memory journey felt like its own vignette. I found myself struggling with the overarching story, as so much time was spent on each memory that, by the end, I found myself asking, “What was the set-up again?” The book’s pacing, which focuses heavily on memory, made it hard for me to connect with the main plot.

At first, I felt the ending was spot on, but then the “Coda Excisions”—a chapter after the final one—left me confused. For me, it diminished the emotional impact of the conclusion.

Diversity is a standout feature of this book. The primary relationship is m/m, and there’s a secondary wlw relationship. All three of the main characters are people of color, and one speaks with a stutter, adding further nuance to the representation.

In terms of content:

There’s some swearing.
Intimacy is handled artistically—focused more on emotions than explicit details.
One character experiences childhood exploitation, and it’s treated with the appropriate weight and sensitivity.
Both main characters are orphaned.
There are a few intense scenes: a bomb threat, a natural disaster resembling a hurricane, and a workplace shooting.
Overall, if you’re less concerned with plot structure and more interested in the emotional journey and immersive writing, this book may resonate with you. I recommend reading the first few chapters to see if the style suits you, and then deciding whether to continue.

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🔁 Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares
Two men trapped in looping artificial realities—always finding each other… maybe even saving the world. 🌍✨

This book is for anyone who loves gorgeous prose that pulls you in and keeps you reflecting long after you’ve finished. Fox’s complex character unravels beautifully throughout, and the emotional depth of this story is undeniable. But the pacing, with its focus on fragmented memories, might leave you feeling disoriented.

🌈 What I loved:

Immersive, thought-provoking writing
m/m and wlw relationships, many characters of color.
Heavy themes of memory, loss, and finding love in a broken world.

⚠️ Content warnings: Violence, childhood trauma, and an intense storm scene.

If you’re into deep emotional journeys over tightly structured plots, this might be the read for you. 📚✨ Check out my full review on opinionsofawolf.com for a deeper dive into the highs and lows!

What book has had you thinking for days after finishing? Drop your thoughts below!👇💬

Really liking Tavares. You have a pretty serious look at whether you can change for someone, and how relationships haunt us in a way, against a frankly wild corporate intrigue plot that does a lot with Egyptian aesthetics and a tech ceo as savior type. This was an unexpected joy, and a highly recommended read.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

This book is a gripping, mind-bending journey through a world of artificial realities and edited memories. Our protagonist, Fox, is a memory editor who wakes up in a memory reconstruction center after a terrorist bombing, trying to piece together his life and marriage. The intricate world-building soon becomes clearer, depicting a future where technology allows us to do anything, questioning whether we should.

It offers an intriguing and complex look at a future shaped by advanced technology and edited memories. While the world-building and character relationships are well-crafted, the bleak elements and references to casual abuse made it a challenging read. If you’re up for a thought-provoking but at times dark journey, give this one a try.

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

Likeable people can be reprehensible. Gay men who will do literally...literally...anything for the men they love can be villains. Because, you realize as Hayes perpetrates some truly terrible actions while retaining the same charm and winning ways as led you to invest in him from the beginning, the world doesn't have that many univalent monsters.

What I love best about stories with flawed protagonists is how relatable they are. We're all flawed. And Hayes, he's flawed enough to make him a menace, what he does...causes...to be the engine of this exciting and action-heavy multiverse thriller. Being awakened to an undreamt-of reality, to be chucked into a world that one never once thought might be real, to have the shocking and sudden revelation that someone until now a stranger is, in fact, The One...that's just the first few pages! This script is gonna keep the butts in the seats with no popcirn trips for sure!

Well...okay, that's a small exaggeration. It's not quite that action-packed but it sure as hell feels as though it is. The strangeness of a filmmaker being the one and only person who could resolve the problem of how to use, whether to believe, a fortune-telling device was, honestly, short-changed. It's a point raised, dealt with by saying, "yep that's how it is" and we're off to the races! In fact, there is a lot of the world-building that is treated in this "just the facts, ma'am" laconic way and then it's Gospel.

You did notice the absence of a fifth star...now you know (most of) why.

The merry chase that Hayes and Yusuf, the inamorato, go on across the dimensions is like reading a spec script from a super-excitable young person with not clue one what "budget" means. What makes that fun is the budget is your mind's dopamine-reward system. What makes that sometimes wearing is the film metaphor is the spine of the book...it is literally holding every scene in the story up, leading them together, and the casting of the characters is exactly that: Casting. It's going to be a rough ride for some. I am one. But the roughnss of the ride isn't a deal-breaker because the way this sled handles is *chef's kiss*

Think of Boston. English people, think of Oxford. Got the picture set? Now...change the color of the streetlights and make the roofs green. That's the experience of traveling in Hayes's multiverse...it really is his, he (one of him) is the inventor of the device that enables all this traveling that we're here talking about. And that Hayes, whom the characters we're following most closely refer to as "Figueiredo" to be clear that they mean the evil SOB who wants (for perfectly understandable reasons) to blow the multiverse up one strand at a time, even he isn't a caricature. Insane. Lost to Humanity. But not ever a risible over-the-top cartoon villain.

But those green-roofed mercury-vapor-lit alt-timelines are real, and he's made it impossible for "our" Hayes and Yusuf not to know, and deal with knowing, what it costs to stay alive in a truly random quantumverse. It changes a person to realize what carnage they've left in their wake through this one "wild and precious life" that Mary Oliver so beautifully committed poetry to describe. Now...think about this...there's a lot more than one, and you now know because you can't not know exactly what carnage you've left behind in it all.

It's damned hard to believe this is Author Tavares's first novel. The economy with which he built the pyre of stakes for each strand of the multiverse...and the aplomb with which he lights the stakes into an inferno of loss and rage and gut-hollowing sadness...usually come to a later-career novelist. It takes time to build faith and willingness to go all in and all out at the looming obstacles armed only with one's talent. Yet here he is, attempting and succeeding first time out.

So maybe a few details fell under the table. A last serving of your favorite dish disappeared and you don't have a dog to blame. Big fat deal! You're in great hands as a truth gets told you: Gay men love hard, care deeply, and fight dirty to protect their man.

Even when it's not pretty.

This is what I look for. It's what I want more of. And it's only his first novel! What a great way to celebrate a new year: Read a high-delivery first novel.

At the beginning, we are with Fox, a memory editor who wakes up in a Center for Memory Reconstruction with no memory of who he is, and more importantly, of his dead husband. Throughout the book, he will discover and remember the many lives they have lived together, and possibly a more sinister element that threatens the world.

As I said, I really enjoyed the characters and discovering how they had changed over the years was so interesting. The setting of the story was also captivating, as we don't know exactly how far in the future we are and what has happenned to the world we know now. Sadly, we soon discover that it is not in good shape and a lot of our actual problems are the same or worse, but it's only mentioned in passing as it was not the main theme of the book (but still has its weight on the unfolding of the story). This last point was frustrating because I think that having the big picture would've helped me really get this world.



Rep: queernorm society, POC as MCs and SCs

TW: death, memory loss, self loss, vomit, cheating on partner, classism, body swapping, "drug" addiction (to memory editing), medical procedures, amnesia, terrorist attack, sequestration, prostitution (child and adult), illness, death of family, grief, traumas, smut

Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for an eARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

“Welcome to Forever” by Nathan Tavares is a book that initially captivated me with its intriguing premise, engaging writing style, and compelling narration. I immediately knew this could easily be a five star read and a new must read author. The book is set in a dystopian future where memories and bodies are easily copied and replaced. It opens the possibility of exploring identity and selfhood as our main character, Fox, begins understanding his memory was erased in some futurist cyber memory bomb, the same bomb that kill his husband Gabe. Fox worked with the company who is now providing him with rehabilitation to first recover and hopefully find the cyber terrorists behind the attack. Naturally, the novel explores the inevitable complications that with these technologies existing in a capitalistic society and run by a private company. It all made for a fascinating and completely absorbing story.

However, as the narrative progressed, my interest began to wane, around the last 1/4th of the novel. The unfortunate timing of a week-long vacation disrupted my reading, likely fueling my exhaustion with the novel, but it meant I became increasingly detached from the story. I found the book failing to maintain its initial excitement. I think the critical point was after a series of major (and compelling reveals), we are introduced to a new character that completely shifts the dynamic of the story. As it became clear how the story was using the various futurist technologies, things became too muddled to really contemplate the larger philosophical implications I was hoping for. I think that may be part of the point. The question of self and identity is itself complex and muddled, so I can appreciate it through that lens. Nevertheless, it still feels less satisfying because it doesn't feel like we get to really sit with some of these ideas. I don't want to imply that Tavares ignores these ideas. Rather, I wanted it to be a more direct and dominate part of the conversation.

I'm left with a sense of missed opportunity. The story is solid and competently told, but it feels like it could have done more. For example, there are other themes' that weren't explored but probably could/should be if we are going to envision a realistic future where these techs exist. It’s perhaps unfair to criticize it for not incorporating every element that I had hoped to see, but having read “Womb City” by Tlotlo Tsamaase earlier this year, it is hard not to think about it as a direct comparison with similar technologies that explore body swapping, simulations, and memory. That book handled its themes extremely poorly, being far too heavy handed, but it still demonstrated what are likely to be inevitable flaws of this type of technology if our current oppressive and capitalistic society is allowed to continue into this same future. Again, this book does not ignore corporate greed and people in power abusing it, but it felt like it wasn't a big enough part of the story Tavares is telling to make it feel fully realized.

In conclusion, “Welcome to Forever” is a compelling book with a strong start but one that fails to fully explore the world its created. I may have enjoyed this more if I had read it earlier in the year or if I had finished it before I got distracted with a vacation. Despite being exceptionally critical of this book due to the initial excitement I felt towards it, it’s still a thought-provoking read, even if it may leave you wanting more. Would recommend.

Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares was a thought-provoking, emotional read. With Inception-like layered complexity, the philosophical and relational questions posed by The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and a complicated queer love story worth the journey it takes you on, Welcome to Forever infuses familiar themes and arcs with fresh originality.

Fox, a memory editor who specialized in re-writing the realities of his clients, wakes up one day with perilously little recollection of who he is. At the Field of Reeds Center for Memory Reconstruction, he learns his own memory was damaged in a terrorist attack that also destroyed the memory archives of others—including his husband, Gabe.

Though it’s not an easy story to describe and nearly impossible without spoilers, Welcome to Forever got so many things right for me. I’ve been fascinated by stories that explore the permeable nature of memory and this novel spends its whole length doing exactly that. How much of who we are is intrinsic, how much is shaped by the experiences we have, and if we no longer have those experiences as a backbone, can we be someone different? Do we even want to be someone different at all?

Central characters Fox and Gabe are deeply flawed yet completely believable, which is also a huge point in this novel’s favor. In an era where character relationships are often distilled down to fanfiction tropes and suffer for the simplification, Fox and Gabe’s dynamic speaks to current-day relational struggles many folks will relate to while injecting nuance and human flaws throughout. If your experience is anything like my own, you will find yourself drawn down, down, down into the facets of their journey, staying up past bedtime following the outcome of a new reveal.

The prose in this novel was also highlight worthy and quotable. So many times I found myself pausing at an emotionally excavating line or profound yet breviloquent turn of phrase. The stylistic choices amplified the emotional beats of the story, which is something I always admire when it happens.

My only critique revolves around structure. Between the extremely unreliable narrator and switching between past and present, Welcome to Forever can be difficult to follow at times. Part of this I am sure is intentional; after all, Fox doesn’t know his own reality from the outset of the story, so to expect a clear and tidy offering would be unfair. But still, it was enough to give me pause at a few points, so it’s worth noting.

Overall, I’m still thinking about this novel on and off long after I read it. Welcome to Forever is a worthy entry into the subset of science fiction that examines personhood, memory, and the relational consequences of losing touch with either of those notions. If a dramatic, labyrinthine depiction of queer love with a backbone of philosophical considerations and thriller-like pacing sounds good to you, I’d recommend giving this one a try.

Thank you to Titan Books and NetGalley for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.

Welcome to Forever was an ARC I requested on a whim and it turned into a new favourite of mine.

In Nathan Tavares's vision of a future, most humans have implants which upload their consciousness to a server every 12h. Got into an accident? No worries, a new body and your latest memory save are available. Gotten a little too old for your liking? Get a younger clone and switch into it. Or change your looks, your gender, anything you like.

And what about your memories? Had a traumatic experience? Or just want to forget about your ex? No problem. It's all just data anyway! (or is it?)

Fox has been working as a so-called memory editor. He is one of the best. Which comes in handy when his own memories are scrambled by a terrorist attack affecting the memory saves. Much more important however: his estranged husband Gabe was killed in the attack. But Fox can recover his memories, right? Or reconstruct Gabe?

But who was Fox? And who was Gabe? Between splinters of memories, old edits uncovering secrets, and a full-blown conspiracy against the company monopolising everyone's memories, Fox has to decide who he was - and whether he could be better.

I absolutely loved the story. Fox and Gabe are deeply flawed and Tavares does not shy away from that. He paints the portrait of a deeply traumatised and complicated man who grapples with the choices he made, the memories he shied away from, and the future he wants.

The yearning for a lost love and for the chance at a do-over hurt on a deeper level.

The book is both smart and emotional. Despite reaching for difficult and complicated topics, it never falls into the trap of pretentiousness. The multiple layers fold into each other with narrative ease, showcasing the foreshadowing and mirroring between memory layers.

I love a good unreliable narrator, which Tavares absolutely nails. But he adds the unreliable world to it, in which nothing is objectively true: memories are subjective, even more so when edited.

I can highly recommend this book. I finished it in one sitting and know I will reread it.

Thank you to Nathan Tavares, Titan Books and Netgalley for allowing me to review this book.

Rounding up a 3.5 stars. This is a complex and challenging but satisfying read that will reward your patience and attention. I don’t usually read sci-fi but the description sounded interesting so I decided to give it a go and I’m very glad I did.

ARC Review: Publish Date 3/12/2024
Thank you Net Galley for letting me read more books!

3.5 stars

What happens when you loose your memory? What happens when we don't like the person we remember we were? This novel has an incredibly interesting ScFi premise/plot and also, a bit of a slog. I have had a hard time investing in characters and story and have been working on it for two months. So for now, I am setting it aside. Every time I pick it up and try to go all in, I immediately get distracted and stop paying attention. If I ever get back to it, I will update this. But for now, not for me.

Fox loved his husband Gabe; all he wanted was for Gabe to finally, finally lower his walls and let Fox in. They even started seeing a marriage therapist–or more accurately, a “Life-Storyboard Consultant.” The idea was to get them to open up about their pasts in order to move forward. If that didn’t work, they could both take advantage of NIL/E’s services and literally edit out the parts of their history that they simply could not grapple with. After all, Fox edited other people’s memories every day; he was a bona fide genius at it and handpicked by NIL/E’s founder, Kadija, to head the company’s editing department. Gabe also knew how it worked; he literally put his memories into the bodies of his physical training clients every day so he “wore” their body to make sure the clients got the workouts needed to get results. But love, marriage, and the best counseling in New Thebes wasn’t enough to save Fox from the way he jealously wanted to possess Gabe. When Fox threw a verbal bomb towards one of Gabe’s clients, suggesting that there was more than just exercise taking place during Gabe’s appointments, it blew their marriage apart. Not long after, a physical bomb killed Gabe and left Fox at the Field of Reeds Center for Memory Recovery.

At Field of Reeds, Fox is a blank slate. He barely knows his name or how he got to the center. The staff and patients reassure him that everything will come back; it always does. For Fox, however, remembering also brings pain. As his memories slowly come back one fractured piece at a time, he realizes just how terrible a husband, how terrible a person he was. Nothing will bring Gabe back, but at least Fox is determined to learn from his mistakes. And the more Fox remembers, the less things make sense. There’s more in his memory than just all the ways he messed up with Gabe. There are memories of being the top editor at NIL/E, memories of being an orphan on a refugee island, memories of downloading his memories into a whole new body and trying to create a whole new existence without Gabe, memories of a psychotic break when even the best editing couldn’t excise the pain of losing Gabe entirely. The more Fox remembers, the less he knows. But he’s not alone. Fox discovers a small cell of so-called Scribes, other patients tasked with discovering how Field of Reeds works and devising a way to bust out. Only then can Fox really know what happened to his husband, his life, and his memory.

Welcome to Forever is an imaginative cyberpunk-esque, dystopian story. The book is organized into four “verses,” each containing several chapters. The verses are like mini-arcs through Fox’s life. The story is not exactly chronological, though that is probably the best fitting overall description of the organization. It’s an exciting story that breaks up the action into puzzle pieces for readers to fit together with helpful reminders, repeated imagery, and tantalizing snippets that point at a story much larger than just a lone man struggling to recover from a traumatic accident.

As noted in the summary, our main character lives in a world where people can and do edit their memories. For the reader, this means our narrator, Fox, is highly unreliable–and sometimes Fox knows that, sometimes he doesn’t. There is also a very fragmented quality to the story telling. A character named Kadija, for example, is a great many things: creator of the most powerful company on the planet, genius memory editor, Fox’s best friend with a savior-complex, figurative god, literal god (?). Kadija and Fox are inextricably linked, as we see through several of Fox’s memories, but there was always a question about which one of these (or how many of these) are true. Take that idea and multiply that times all Fox’s primary memories–of Gabe, of his job, of his dealing with losing Gabe–and you get an idea about the creativeness of this book.

One thing I loved about this story is how richly the world is described. Not only does the world borrow themes from ancient Egypt, but the way the characters’ experiences give life to the world and cultures in the story made Fox’s story all the more compelling. For example, it’s clear land agriculture has been replaced with aquaculture with whimsical products like “CowN’Cod nuggies.” Hurricanes have been renamed “furycanes.” This world has its own lexicon to pepper the dialogue with genre-appropriate phrases like “codedamned”(pretty obvious) and “mipper” (a derogatory term for people who use memory editing tech like recreational drugs). Then there’s the imagery. Early in the story, there was a tantalizing mention of purple glass and that it related to Fox and Gabe’s origin story and that kept me keyed into colors and materials looking for clues as to when the meaning behind “purple glass” would become clear. When it does, it’s both affirming and heartbreaking. The story seems loaded with small visual clues that help anchor the story and allowed me as a reader to connect or anticipate important events.

The romance element of the story was a delight as well. Fox and Gabe are established, at least in so far as we know at the start of the story. That dynamic changes several times throughout the book as we learn more about who Fox is and how his job as a memory editor has impacted his life. But all complexity aside, if there is one thing true about Fox, it’s that he loves Gabe and is willing to do whatever it takes to get him back. In addition to this complicated, present-day Fox and Gabe relationship, we get a good look into their past when the first meet that is sweet and very first-love. There’s also a good chunk of the book dedicated to exploring how Fox reacts when he tries to move on after losing Gabe. All of these different realities come together and, eventually, Fox has to make sense of them and I enjoyed seeing how Fox grows (and maybe doesn’t) over the myriad memories he swims through.

Anyone looking for an immersive, sweeping saga about a man obsessed with getting his husband back by any means necessary (even if it means becoming a better person) or readers who enjoy nuanced, layered stories that read like puzzle pieces to fit together, I think you’ll really enjoy this book.

What makes you, you? Is it the body that you walk around in or is it the memories that you hold and the experiences that you’ve had?

Welcome to Forever takes place in a futuristic world in which memory editing has become the norm. Death is essentially a thing of the past, as your memory stream can just be uploaded into a new, healthy body. But when the protagonist, Fox, wakes up in a rehabilitation centre for those with damaged memories, he doesn’t remember how he got there. He is informed by the staff that he was caught up in a terrorist attack and that his husband, Gabe, didn’t survive the attack and his memory stream was lost.

The novel explores Fox’s journey trying to piece together his fragmented memory, and grieving for the husband he thinks is lost forever. As time goes on, he starts to remember things that he wishes would stay forgotten.

Personally, I really enjoyed the beginning of the novel, learning about this interesting new world in which humans could never really die. I found Fox to be a likeable narrator, and I enjoyed the cast of characters that Tavares brought together. I especially liked Kadhija, the pioneer/ CEO of the memory editing business with her sparkly god-complex. I also loved seeing such a huge amount of LGBT+ rep in the novel, something that I think is still lacking in Sci-Fi, so kudos to the author for trying to queer up the genre!

Where this book fell down for me was the constant shifting between POVs and also the lack of impact some chapters had on the whole story. Early on in the book, the narrative shifts from first person to third person and I was so disorientated I had to put the book down for a few days before coming back to it.

By the end of the novel, I was feeling a bit deflated. The different layers of memory streams, the different characters who were actually the same character, and the contradicting motives all culminated in me feeling like I’m just not smart enough to understand the book. This was compounded by an ending which fell really flat for me. I won’t add spoilers here, but I will warn you that if you’re looking for an emotional payoff at the end of a book, this isn’t the title for you.

Overall, I liked the concept of the novel and I thought it was well-written and woven together but ultimately it was just too confusing for me. I’m grateful to NetGalley and Titan Books for allowing me to access an ARC copy. (3.5 stars)

I feel like this is the sort of book that either sweeps you away or doesn’t. And for me, it just didn’t. It needed more moments that completely changed your view of everything that happened in the book, which, while there, just didn’t rock my world at all.

The relationship was good, although it did seem to be fixed very quickly when the scrape appeared. I liked that it was a tense relationship based on mutual problems, because, though it was a bit depressing at the start of the book, there was a lot to work on and develop. It made a good change from the meet-someone-and-fall-in-love style romance that a lot of books tend to be about. I also like the fact that both of the characters were immigrants, a fact which impacted on their characters and relationship a lot.

I also will say, this is an incredibly hard book to understand. It’s one of those books where you really just have to relax and let the story take you where it wants to go and just accept that you understand nothing. Just go with the flow. So if you don’t like books where you feel absolutely and completely lost at times, maybe pick a different book.

All in all, it was an enjoyable book, it just didn’t have the impact on me that maybe the author intended.

Here is my review of this mind-bending science fiction, Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavarres.
I received a copy of this book for a free and unbiased opinion.
This is a book, that needs your full attention, and I found this a challenging ( in a good way) book. This story moves from strand to another, with these strands making sense at the end. The story twists and turns in unexpected ways which each new reveal adding a new layer to this complex plot.
The underlying theme is about memory and who we are if these edited or deleted at will but at its heart is the love story between Fox and Gabe.
It was hard to warm to Fox when the chapters were in his point of view but this changed when we view Fox through the people around him. There were times when I had no idea what was going on in the story but by the end of book, I did have more of an idea as to what had happened and why.
The world-building in the future of memory edited, physical trainers can inhabit your body to help you and virtual pets is fascinating.

Welcome to Forever by Nathan Travares follows the journey of Fox, an unfortunate victim of a terrorist attack that took away his husband and a lot of his memories. What follows, is a desperate attempt to revive them, and unraveling of deeper conspiracies, in a highly advanced and borderline dystopian world.
The universe building was eventual and
there were many oddities that was truly dystopic to think about. However, occasionally the meandering did seem to cause a delay in getting to the point of the whole plot. The style of writing, too, seemed a little whimsical and disjointed at places. Coupled with a complex world building to be achieved, I did face some comprehension difficulties until midway through the book. The problem magnifies because the eccentricity of the narrator is accounted for.
The idea and the plot of the book was solid, but the execution could have been a bit better overall. Still, it was an enjoyable read.

This story primarily follows Fox. It has an almost psychedelic affect that makes it a little difficult to follow at times. I really enjoyed the characterizations in this novel. Fox was a great main character, both flawed and root worthy. He’s living in a type of rehabilitation center trying to recover his memories after some type of terrorist bombing that shredded the memories of all the victims including his husband, Gabe.

I loved the concept of this story. Prior to the attack, Fox worked as a memory editor in a future where you can edit unhappy memories out of your life and replace them with happier times or even the life you want. You can even have the love of your life, whether dead or just gone, replaced with a construct with their memories and mannerisms or yourself when you want a new younger body, which raises all sorts of questions about the spirit or soul of a person and whether its lost or continues in the new body.

However, as Fox started to delve into the past and present and what really happened, the story became a little muddled for me. I spent a lot of time confused in the narrative and whether I was in the real world, if I was with Fox, if Fox or Gabe and anyone really was who they said in time and place. It just became a little too chaotic for me as the story progressed.

Despite my issues, parts of this story were beautiful and very innovative.

Thank you to Netgalley and Titan Books for a copy provided for an honest review.

Memories are some of the most important things that people have. We only really exist in the moment, with our memories allowing us to look back into our past and shape who we are right now. But memories are also incredibly flawed. Two people can remember very different versions of the same events, sometimes to the point of contradiction. So how do you know if your memories are real, where does the line between memory and fiction begin? In his latest novel Nathan Tavares plays around with memory, what it means, how it shapes someone, and what happens when you lose those memories.

Welcome to Forever tells the story of Fox, a man who begins the story with little to no memory of his life. Like an amnesiac, he still understands the world, he can talk, he can function within society, but he has no idea about his past. He's staying in the Fields of Reeds medical centre, where the staff are trying to help him to regain his memories following a deadly terrorist attack that destroyed Fox's identity. As he begins to dig into his fragmented and missing memories he starts to learn more about the man who he lost in the attack, of the life they used to have together; but also stumbles across something much more sinister too.

It's hard to talk about the plot of Welcome to Forever for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's the kind of story that you don't want to reveal too much of. The amount of information given on the back of the book is the absolute most that you want (and going in with no foreknowledge would be even better) as I found that letting the story unfold at its own pace, revealing more character, world building, and plot piece by piece at the right time was as big a part of the experience of reading this book as anything else. And that brings me to the second reason why I can't really say much about the plot; because Tavares isn't just telling a single, straight narrative here.

The book doesn't play out linearly, things happen out of order, some things don't quite make sense to begin with, you jump around different times and places, experiencing different memories and different versions of events. Whilst this means that if you were to try and explain the book fully you'd probably need a cork board full of notes and red string, it does lead to a unique reading experience. You almost feel like Fox yourself, with your mind being pulled from one place to another, with your expectations forever changing and your interpretation on events coming into question more than one. Sometimes a narrative is simply a narrative, but sometime how a narrative is constructed can be much more than just a story; it transcends into a work of art itself, and Welcome to Forever is very much a carefully constructed work of art.

I'd love to be able to describe the book more, but I don't want to spoil the experience for readers. So all I'll say is that if you're looking for an interesting sci-fi concept, a layered love story, and a narrative that feels like it was years in the making, Welcome to Forever should be top of your reading pile.

Whilst reading, I kept thinking, this feels like a Black Mirror episode of a Chuck Palahnuick novel in The Matrix. Now I know that sounds like a lot, but bear with me....

Fox is a memory editor under the famous Khadija Banks and was one of the best until his own memory was wiped in an attack. Fox is now currently residing in a Centre for Memory Reconstruction with other people trying to get their memories back for lots of different reasons

To try and rebuild these memories, Fox will have to dive into his past and see himself maybe as someone who he doesn't want to be anymore, especially when it comes to how he was with his husband Gabe, who was also caught up in the attack.

Fox and a group of other residents will have to go on their own journeys and might even come across a bigger problem as they also try and sort their own issues out

Everytime I read a sci-fi like this, I think, why don't I read more sci-fi... and this particular one is out tomorrow, so you don't have to wait long to pick this one up if it sounds like your kind of thing

Thanks to NetGalley and Titan for the review copy of this awesome book