Harper Teen
May 02, 2017
288 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depository/or Amazon
audio version: narrated by Maria Cabezas, Dan Bittner, Tom Phelan
HarperAudio
May 02, 2017
7 hours, 25 minutes
Audible
Cata Cordova suffers from such debilitating insomnia that she agreed to take part in an experimental new procedure. She thought things couldn’t get any worse...but she was terribly wrong.
Soon after the experiment begins, there’s a malfunction with the lab equipment, and Cata and six other teen patients are plunged into a shared dreamworld with no memory of how they got there. Even worse, they come to the chilling realization that they are trapped in a place where their worst nightmares have come to life. Hunted by creatures from their darkest imaginations and tormented by secrets they’d rather keep buried, Cata and the others will be forced to band together to face their biggest fears. And if they can’t find a way to defeat their dreams, they will never wake up.
Dreamfall is creepy and frightening but also makes you think and you really do care about the characters. Well, some of them more than others.
The idea of Dreamfall is great and the 'why's behind the characters involvement in this 'experimental new procedure' take away some of the craziness of them participating. The more you learn what they experience and how it's impacting their lives in a detrimental way, the more you can understand agreeing to something that seems so extreme.
I loved that while each character had such different reasons or causes for their sleep issues, the characters had similarities in what physically they dealt with and why they wanted a change. It was also more relateable to anyone with sleep issues of their own.
The way that author Amy Plum uses an outside character to introduce more information about the characters in the dreamworld was genius. It gives readers background on the characters and a better understanding of not only why they're in the experiment but who they are and, maybe, what to expect from them. Yet - and this is what was really so great - the characters aren't privy to this information, they're still in the dark about each other, in many ways. It builds a bit of the tension and connects readers to the characters.
The dreamworld is scary and troubling and hard to understand at first but as things progress and as we (thanks to different characters) learn a bit more, you understand it more . . . but fear it more, as well. I am really looking forward to seeing what happens in the next book given what the characters have figured out, so far. And what they have yet to uncover.
Dreamfall is the first book in the Dreamfall series and absolutely left me wishing that Book 2 were available already. I wanted to read it now.
*The audio book of this title was very good. There were a few places where it seemed the narrator was. Making. Each. Word. A. Sentence. There were weird pauses between each of a handful of words (and where it didn't make sense and/or wasn't for emphasis). It was odd but infrequent.
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