When the Boy of Your Dreams Becomes Reality...

Title: Dreamology
Author: Lucy Keating
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: April 12, 2016
Source: received from publisher
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

For as long as Alice can remember, she has dreamed of Max. Together they have traveled the world and fallen deliriously, hopelessly in love. Max is the boy of her dreams—and only her dreams. Because he doesn’t exist.

But when Alice walks into class on her first day at a new school, there he is. It turns out, though, that Real Max is nothing like Dream Max, and getting to know each other in reality isn’t as perfect as Alice always hoped.

When their dreams start to bleed dangerously into their waking hours, the pair realize that they might have to put an end to a lifetime of dreaming about each other. But when you fall in love in your dreams, can reality ever be enough?

I've always been fascinated by dreams. I used to keep a dream journal when I was younger and I'd write in it every time I woke up with a dream I could remember, then I'd try to figure out what it meant. Pretty soon, though, I realized that I didn't really like trying to decode my dreams; I didn't like that the wild adventures my dreams took me on could be boiled down to something as mundane as that I was worried about an exam. So maybe you can see why the merest mention of this involuntary nighttime brain function in a book's summary would result in an immediate add to my TBR.

I loved the secret, imaginary friend aspect of Sarah Rees Brennan's Unspoken more than any other aspect of that series, which is probably why I was so drawn to this book, since it has a similar premise. I still remember that first awkward meeting between Kami and Jared, and though Alice and Max's first meeting is substantially less awkward since they can't talk to each other with their minds, it is no less jarring for them to realize that the person they've been dreaming about their entire lives is a real person, made of flesh and blood.

Dreamology started off very strong. Alice was jaded and snarky and altogether the kind of protagonist I usually love. And I did like her character...most of the time. Okay, maybe mostly just at the beginning and the end of the story. Because she makes some pretty hurtful decisions and says some pretty dumb things along the way, all in the name of love. I know...love can make you pretty stupid at times, but it shouldn't cause you to disregard the feelings of those that you call friends.

So, yeah, the middle of Dreamology wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. It didn't drag, but it was infuriating as hell. It seemed that some characters were only included for the drama that could be inflicted upon them or that they themselves could inflict. Also, the "science" behind the characters sharing the same dreams was so vague that I would just rather it have been some fluke. I get the psychology of why they shared dreams and were in each other's dreams, but I would rather it not have been "scienced" away like it was.

I appreciated the hand-wringing the characters did at the end, though. Could their real selves ever really be enough when they'd had the magic of their dream selves? And who could blame them for wondering that when their dreams were so vibrant? I've had many a dream that I wished I'd never had to wake from. But for their own sanity, it was imperative that they separate themselves from their dreams, and in doing so, explore what they really meant to each other.

Lucy Keating does an amazing job creating vivid dreamscapes but also of meshing wakefulness and dreams. It's obvious she's a dreamer and likely has many more adorable stories like this one to tell. I can't wait to read more of her whimsical and evocative writing.

GIF it to me straight:

About the author:

Lucy lives in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, attended Williams College in the Berkshires, and still misses the East Coast very much.

When she's not writing, Lucy can usually be found obsessing over the latest music, inventing new flavors of ice cream, or having what she feels are perfectly acceptable conversations with her dog, Ernie.

Find Lucy:

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

Read More

Labels: contemporary, dreamology, harper-collins, lucid dreaming, lucy keating, reviews

{WOW} Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's WoW selection is...








's Pick:



Title: Places No One Knows
Author: Brenna Yovanoff
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Delacorte
Publication Date: May 17, 2016

A high-achieving girl falls for the most imperfect boy in school through a series of mysterious dreams, which change how she feels about herself, her future, and love.

Waverly Camdenmar doesn’t have friends, she has social assets. She doesn’t get sucked into drama, she makes tactical decisions. Her life is dominated by achievement, competition, and functioning as the power behind the throne in her school’s little kingdom of popularity. But even the most resilient mercenary has weaknesses. Perfection is exhausting, and her longstanding alliance with queen-bee Maribeth rests on a foundation of resentment, anxiety, and a nagging feeling that there must be something beyond student council. Waverly’s name might be at the top of every leader board, but she hasn’t slept in days.

In a last-ditch attempt at relaxation, she finds herself at the center of an inexplicable phenomenon when a harmless counting exercise ends with Waverly materializing in front of one of the school’s most dedicated burn-outs. Marshall is not someone Waverly would ever consider … well, she would just never consider him. His nights are spent indulging in the kind of self-destructive pastimes she can only roll her eyes at. But despite herself, her curiosity is piqued. He sees her—really sees her —and his earnestness and his empathy are strangely affecting.

In these ghostly dreams, Waverly can do what she wants and say what she thinks, without risk or repercussion. Without it meaning anything. As nights pass, however, she begins to understand the nature of relationships, and to question her own daytime machinations. Her encounters with Marshall are growing steadily more intimate. Every new interaction forces her to ask herself how close is too close, and her days are becoming restless, complicated by her silent anger at Maribeth, and her budding friendship with a raucous, enigmatic girl who was never supposed to be anything but Waverly’s latest pygmalion project.

The truth is, it’s hard to be cavalier about hurting people when you know them. When you love them. As her edges begin to fray, Waverly must confront the very real danger of losing Marshall to the rigid image she’s spent so long cultivating, and accept that the only way to keep the people who matter to her is to embrace what it means to be vulnerable.

I love stories where mean girls learn the error of their ways. But this story goes beyond that from the sounds of it. I mean, the dream aspect intrigues me to no end, but the promise of a bad boy love interest who shows the main character what she's missing is also very enticing. Yovanoff's books are always a bit different, but I really like the premise of this one. I hope it's my favorite one yet!


What are you desperately waiting for this Wednesday? Let us know in the comments or share a link to your own WoW post!

Read More

Labels: brenna yovanoff, contemporary, grabby hands, lucid dreaming, places no one knows, random house, waiting on wednesday (wow)

{Review} Slow and Steady Wins the Race...Usually - Dreamstrider by Lindsay Smith

Title: Dreamstrider
Author: Lindsay Smith
Series: n/a
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Publication Date: October 6, 2015
Source: ARC received for review from publisher
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

A high-concept, fantastical espionage novel set in a world where dreams are the ultimate form of political intelligence.

Livia is a dreamstrider. She can inhabit a subject's body while they are sleeping and, for a short time, move around in their skin. She uses her talent to work as a spy for the Barstadt Empire. But her partner, Brandt, has lately become distant, and when Marez comes to join their team from a neighboring kingdom, he offers Livia the option of a life she had never dared to imagine. Livia knows of no other dreamstriders who have survived the pull of Nightmare. So only she understands the stakes when a plot against the Empire emerges that threatens to consume both the dreaming world and the waking one with misery and rage.

A richly conceived world full of political intrigue and fantastical dream sequences, at its heart Dreamstrider is about a girl who is struggling to live up to the potential before her.

I wasn't expecting this to be anything like Inception. Okay, maybe a little. And so far as being confused for half the thing, it was exactly like that movie. The summary states that this novel is "high concept" and I get where they're coming from, especially so far as the political intrigue matters, but I think the book is about so much more, with that simply being the driving force.

Dreamstrider boasts of a girl who can traverse the dream world and inhabit others' bodies while they sleep. But that's not the half of what this book is. There's so much espionage and military stratagem and romance and then you have the dream world itself. And that's all without delving into Nightmare and what its return means for the residents of Barstadt.

Even after the thing that I expected to happen happened, I was still content to keep reading. I wanted to see Livia gain her freedom. She'd already freed herself from the shackles of the Tunnels, but in doing so, she found herself in a cage at the Ministry, dreamstriding for the Barstadt Empire as they saw fit, always with the promise of citizenship papers dangled before her. So, yeah, even though I knew certain opportunities sounded too good to be true, I still wanted to see Livia fight her way out of this life.

The romance swings into triangle territory a bit, but I honestly thought one of the characters was off the table, as far as love interests go. I never factored him in and them BAM, he's professing his undying love. I loathe when a romance comes out of left field. It could be argued that he was always an option, though not a viable one, that it was clear he cared about Livia from the start. But caring and acting on feelings of love out of nowhere are two very different things. And the amount of time Livia spends lamenting on the impossibility of a relationship with this person is near-obsessive.

There were some serious religious undertones in this book, as well, and not being a very religious person myself, I found it to be a bit preachy. It equated to the Dreamer being this God-like figure, worshiped and revered among the Barstadters and thought to be a fraud by outside cultures. Livia has to come to terms with who the Dreamer is and what that means for her and the fight to keep Nightmare from returning to her world. She struggles with her faith in the Dreamer throughout the novel, but it comes to a culmination just when she needs her faith the most.

I was all set to rate this book four stars...until the last 50 pages or so. It had been such a slow, lovely read, with the author methodically giving us glimpses of Livia's world and that of the dream world, Oneiros. It never felt like enough, though...until it was too much and then it was utter chaos and I couldn't tell one world from the other, though that was probably the point. But it just made the ending feel too rushed to me.

GIF it to me straight:

About the Author:

Lindsay Smith's love of Russian culture has taken her to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and a reindeer festival in the middle of Siberia. She lives in Washington, DC, where she writes on foreign affairs. SEKRET was her debut novel.

Find Lindsay:

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Tumblr

Read More

Labels: beautiful covers, dreamstrider, fantasy, lindsay smith, lucid dreaming, macmillan, reviews

{Audiobook} Review: Dream a Little Dream by Kerstin Gier

Title: Dream a Little Dream
Author: Kerstin Gier
Narrator(s): Marisa Calin
Series: The Silver Trilogy, book #1
Length: 10 hrs 6 mins
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: April 14, 2015
Source: ARC received from publisher, purchased audiobook
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

Mysterious doors with lizard-head knobs. Talking stone statues. A crazy girl with a hatchet. Yes, Liv's dreams have been pretty weird lately. Especially the one where she's in a graveyard at night, watching four boys conduct dark magic rituals.

The strangest part is that Liv recognizes the boys in her dream. They're classmates from her new school in London, the school where she's starting over because her mom has moved them to a new country (again). But what's really scaring Liv is that the dream boys seem to know things about her in real life, things they couldn't possibly know--unless they actually are in her dreams? Luckily, Liv never could resist a good mystery, and all four of those boys are pretty cute....

Narrated by Marisa Calin, who also narrated The Ruby Red Trilogy on audio for Macmillan, Dream a Little Dream is a funny little jaunt into the world of witchcraft and demons and lucid dreams. It never deigns to take itself too seriously, much as the Ruby Red books never got overly technical when it came to time travel. Both stories are cute and enjoyable in their own right, but I'd have a dickens of a time deciding which I liked better. Especially seeing as how I like cheeky, talking inanimate objects, and those are present and accounted for in both. :)

I listened to this back in April I think and promptly forgot to review it. D'oh. So, I listened again a few days ago as a refresher. Some books I can read over and over again and others, it's a pain to read or listen to even once more. No problems listening to this one again because the main character is completely adorkable and the narrator does such a good job with Gier's books. It's actually rather interesting to experience this lighter take on dreams and the demons they harbor, considering I'm also reading the last book of the Nevermore trilogy, which takes a much darker look at this same subject. Completely different stories and the atmosphere is the exact opposite, but still interesting to compare.

Magic rituals. Cute boys. London. All things that appeal to me. And I love the new cover. The original cover wasn't bad, per se, but it was a little too cutesy for this story. And while this story is cute overall and kind of silly -- I mean, they found a book and raised a demon and he agreed to give each of them their dearest wish? -- it does have a darker side, especially when it comes to the lengths some will go to in order to appease said demon.

The dream interactions were my favorite aspect of this story, especially when Liv still believed that they were just dreams. But when she discovers that those four cute boys from school share her dreams, things really get interesting. I was admittedly a little worried about so many hot boys available for the choosing, but they're not really...available, I mean. :) One is soon to be Liv's stepbrother, another is in a long-distance relationship, another is a wanna-be player who's still hung up on his ex. That leaves just one, and he's the one I would've have picked for Liv from the beginning, so it all worked out. No strange love shapes to be had here. =)

I read a story the other day that mentioned "surface" friends, and that's kind of how I felt about this book: it's only just scratching the surface of what Liv and her new friends might be capable of -- or what they might be in store for. I'm sure the next book will dig a little deeper. And I'm just glad I didn't have to wait until the third book for the romance to really heat up, like in Gier's other series.

GIF it to me straight:

About the author:

Kerstin Gier is the bestselling author of the Ruby Red trilogy, as well as several popular novels for adults. This series was translated by Anthea Bell into English.

Find Kerstin:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook

Read More

Labels: audiobooks, beautiful covers, demons, kerstin gier, lucid dreaming, macmillan, magic, reviews, the silver trilogy, translated novels, witchcraft