Dreamology
Author: Lucy Keating
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Grade: B
I knew I had to read this one from the moment I saw the Amazon blurb comparing it to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Alice has been dreaming about Max since she was a little girl. Even now the dreams are fun, fantastical versions of reality, where she can float on a Cheerio or slide down her stairs because the walls and anything that can harm her is a cushion. You kind of get the gist with the dreams pretty quickly.
All that changes when she walks into a new school and realizes Max is a living breathing boy and the dreams are now blurring into both their realities and Alice has to find out what’s really happening before potentially losing her sanity.
I liked most of this book. It’s a good story. A good idea and I thought Alice and Max were pretty relatable characters. The why this is happening part of the story is pretty interesting as well. And I really did like the dream element. So much YA feels like other worlds or fake past Kingdoms but the dreaming world was a nice change.
Yet it lacked the edge of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and (for me at least) only skirted the depth. (Seriously, I originally tried to get this from my local Barnes and Noble in the YA section and when I couldn’t find it they told me they had stocked it in Children’s for some reason.)
The resolution felt a little bit… anti-climatic. As to Alice and Max I think a big problem for me was if this was a movie I would have said, “little to no chemistry between the two leads.” Seriously, I liked her better with other characters. I definitely needed a reason to feel like they should be together in real life other than the dream fact.
So all in all a good story, relatable characters and an interesting idea but overall left me feeling a little disappointed.
Recommend: Yes. It didn’t quite meet my expectations for reason’s stated above but it was still an enjoyable read.