I had a problem like this in one of my stories, where the main character kept jumping between their reality and a reality where they’d died. I had them recognize what was going on right away, because I thought it would be obvious, but when I showed it to anyone who wasn’t an avid reader of science fiction, they were bothered by how quickly the main character jumped to this conclusion, or just plain confused by it. It’s was the opposite problem you have, so I think it just depends on your perspective.

Anything and everything Brandon Sanderson

Extremely loud and incredibly close. That is definitely one of the strangest novels I’ve ever read. It’s packed to the brim with symbolic meaning and the way it switches between the grandparents letters to the kids POV to the scrapbook to the mute notebook is bizzare and it’s all so out of order. But narratively it’s the most unique book I’ve ever read

I read those three books but in reverse order, and each one was better than the previous. Dark matter I could not put down and is definitely in my top 10 books of all time. But I agree with you that upgrade was good but not fantastic.