The Space Between Worlds (by Micaiah Johnson)

I found this book via the NPR list of 50 favorite sci-fi and fantasy books of the past decade. I've read 13 of them - I guess 14 now - but not going to try and read them all or anything, just the ones that sound good. And this one did! And it was!

The premise is that you can travel between parallel worlds, but only if the version of you on that world is already dead. So people who have had precarious lives are now the people who can transfer knowledge between these parallel words. The story follows Cara, who is only alive on 8 of the 382 worlds close enough to ours to travel to, and who may not survive on those for very long either.

It's a page-turner, as you might expect, as Cara deals with powerful forces on multiple worlds that ultimate turn out to harbor dangerous secrets.  The premise is super compelling, the world-building is great, and our main character is a bisexual woman of color, which is rad too.  I do want to say as a content warning, a lot of the plot deals with domestic abuse and abusers, and I would recommend avoiding it if that could be triggering for you. Otherwise, heartily recommended!