So today I'm going to review a book I've reread many a times, a book in which I know my thoughts are in order about. This book is actually pretty 'old', published in 2008, and I have not heard much talk about it in the book community.
It is:
I'm pretty sure there have been a couple of cover changes to this book, but this is the cover of the book I own. I read these in about 2011, when I bought the whole trilogy at Borders (You can tell I bought these a while ago. Lol!) on a whim with a gift card. Of course being younger and not as eager in the whole 'reading-the-back' deal, I'm pretty sure I picked these up because I had seen my older sister with them. I can say for sure now, that it was probably the best thing I could have done. These books were my introduction to the YA genre. I would probably classify this book as a contemporary/ paranormal.
This trilogy follows 17 year old Janie, a teen with an alcoholic mother who lives on the poor side of town, living off of her mother's welfare payments and Janie's job a nursing home. Janie has never met her father and isn't taken care of by her mother, who spends all day in her room drinking. She has always been an outsider, having to distance herself from other people due to her unique ability: Janie gets sucked into the dreams of sleeping people around her. She is pulled into dreams, basically collapsing where ever she is, and is forced to sit through another person's dreams inside her own head. This ability has taken a toll on her health and her social life. But when Janie is forced to watch a horrific nightmare of Caleb's, a boy who is assumed to be a pot head and drug dealer, she struggles with the feelings she begins to develop towards Caleb. Janie realizes that she wants to learn to control the dreams and even help the people whose dream she's in.
Even though it's a pretty length description, the book is not nearly as complicated as it seems. Lisa McMann has a beautiful way of writing that makes everything seem so simple, but so intense. She takes out all the lengthy descriptions of scenes, and manages to just keep the bones of the story, while still telling a rich, full one. This book kind of reminds me of those stories told in poems, with the choppiness she sometimes includes. Also, she puts in times, like 9:17 or 8:34, to help give you a better understanding. She also uses dates to introduce flashbacks or things that have happened previously in Janie's life.
The romance isn't instant in any sense and there are actually a lot of bumpy roads. The character Caleb is wonderful, a boy with his own problems, but his own fierceness. He's smart and witty, and an overall perfect match for Janie. The character development is very much based on the character's actions, so as the story progresses, you get a very good picture for what the characters are all about.
I definitely give this book a 5 out of 5 stars, and I plan on rereading this again very soon.
I feel like I got super monotone during the end, but thank you for reading this review!
Ta-Ta for now!
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