Choose

by Carey Wallace

CHOOSE is a beautiful, paranoid novel in the grand tradition of the choose-your-own-adventure, set during a single night in New York City. You've lost your keys, and the search for them will take you to every corner of the city: explosions in Chinatown, hidden rivers underground, darkened bookstores, Soho galleries, rooftop parties—all while trying to puzzle out, as mankind has through history, the uneasy balance between decision and destiny. There's only one ending—but seventy-seven different ways to reach it.

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 2005

About the author

Carey Wallace was raised in small towns in Michigan. Her work has appeared in Oasis, SPSM&H, Detroit's MetroTimes and quarrtsiluni, which she guest-edited in 2008. She is a founder of the Working Artists Initiative for the International Arts Movement, which helps emerging artists establish strong creative habits, of the Zoae Series, a New York arts showcase which she directed until 2008, and of the event-based Lost City Gallery, which has connected young artists with patrons in both New York and Detroit. She is a photographer with Detroit Safari, which has documented Detroit's vulnerable abandoned landmarks annually since 2003. In 2000, she also founded an annual arts retreat, The Hillbilly Underground, which draws nationally-recognized filmakers, writers, fine artists, and musicians to rural Michigan each summer. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Reviews

[Ctazelaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's fun to revisit the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre as an adult, and interesting to see the author use the genre to explore predestination...seems like a perfect fit. But, as with any CYOA, there's very little plot development and zero character development.