Toby Streams the Universe by Maya Lassiter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Fiction
Toby is a psychic. He can tell a person’s past, present, and future. His gift is getting steadily stronger and that is a problem. Toby comes from a family of psychics. Eventually the contact with The Stream makes them all insane. His grandfather has been kept in a drug-induced coma for years. His father, who preached control and secrecy to his children, just disappeared.
Toby has been reading a book written by many generations of his family members as they tried to deal with their psychic abilities. Most committed suicide by the age of 35. Toby is 29.
Being able to see into the minds of strangers has made Toby a recluse. Any contact with the outside world is done through his personal assistant, Penelope, who he has never met.
It is getting harder for Toby to cut off access to The Stream. It paralyzes him in public. Every time he uses it he needs more alcohol to make it stop. But his best friend is now a PI and wants him to help with missing person cases. He accidentally reads Penelope over the phone and realizes that her toddler son is dying. His younger sister is also psychic and has decided on a date for her suicide. It is time to figure out if this can be controlled or if a steady descent into madness is all that he has to look forward to in life.
There is one entry in the family history that offers clues. Agatha talked about being able to control it but the majority of her entries have been ripped out of the book. Should he follow her lead or will that just make him lose control more quickly?
What could you do if you knew the future? Can you change it? Should you try?Â
