Book Review | Upgrade by Blake Crouch

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

★★★★☆

352 pages

Published: July 12, 2022

by Ballantine Books

“You are the next step in human evolution.”

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep. 

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways. 

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy. 

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost. 

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human. 

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution? 

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

Link to Goodreads

Main Characters

• Logan Ramsay – main character; works for the Gene Protection Agency – was
• Miriam Ramsay- Logan’s mom; genius who started the gene modifications with locusts in hopes to help crops, which backfired and led to a famine
• Kara Ramsay – Logan’s sister; she was in special forces
• Edward – Logan’s boss at the GPA that keeps him locked up to monitor his upgrade
• Beth – Logan’s wife
• Mia – Logan’s daughter

My Review

Another Blake Crouch book that has me feeling anxious about the future – he paints his stories in a way that I can envision all of the bad things happening!

Logan is part of the Gene Protection Agency. On a raid, he is hit with shrapnel that ends up editing his DNA. He soon finds that he has been ‘upgraded’ and is being monitored (imprisoned) by the GPA to monitor the change. His sister Kara breaks him out and they get into a moral argument about whether or not they should upgrade the population – at the risk of killing around a billion people.

The book was a quick, engaging read. It was action packed and suspenseful. Crouch created a dystopian future that was easy to picture. The moral argument between the Kara and Logan had me questioning who I thought was right. While this wasn’t my favorite Crouch book (that goes to Recursion!), I think this book was a very good read. There were parts where Crouch got very detailed – describing genes and DNA and all the modifications that took place – that got a little boring and I glossed over; however, I would absolutely recommend this book.

Spoilers