It is now the end of May 2016. And I just finished the book. You can call me a lot of things, but a quitter ain't one of them....
This book is about a college student, Sara, who is studying to be a doctor in the late 80s, early 90s. One night, she realizes that she is able to see other people's dreams. This has it's ups and downs. For example, she meets a guy named Brian and falls in love with him, partially because she has seen him dream about her. A major negative would be that she is able to see the dreams of a serial killer who is dreaming about murdering young girls.
The premise sounds great, doesn't it? Sara has to hunt down the murderer before he strikes again. Except it doesn't go that way. She spends a lengthy amount of time ignoring this problem or trying to explain it away. When she does seek help from professionals and her friends, there is no sense of urgency. Even when she sees that she could have prevented at least one of the girls from being murdered if she had taken action sooner, she doesn't feel compelled to act for weeks at a time. While I like Sara, it makes it a little difficult to understand her when she doesn't really seem to have a driving motivation to help other young girls when she can if it might make her look a little off her rocker. She does help one girl, however, because she is able to do so by bluffing her way through. I also don't understand why she doesn't confide in her parents, who she has a really close relationship with.
The story is told in first person for the most part, except for the dream sequences. This made it even harder to connect to the other characters in the story, and we don't get a lot of backstory for any of them. I also feel that it may have worked better to switch those two POVs around so the dreams were more intimate than regular life.
The vast majority of the story is about Sara studying for tests, interacting with other college students, going to the cafeteria and having to settle for cereal, falling in love with Brian, and eavesdropping on dreams that do nothing to progress the story. There are several scenes that could have been left out completely, as they do nothing to move the story forward. I don't know if this was the author's attempt to throw us off the track of the true murderer or if he just doesn't realize that scenes should only be included if they lend something to the momentum of the story. The same can be said for numerous characters who are introduced and fade away and have little to no impact.
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| "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." J. Lennon (picture via Pixabay) |
As far as the antagonist is concerned, it is obvious from the character's brief, but pointed, introduction that he is the antagonist. Despite the fact that there are lots of other characters who show up and disappear for no reason, the only purpose this character could possibly serve is so that he could eventually be the bad guy. However, if you look at the key role of an antagonist, it's generally to move the plot forward by antagonizing the protagonist. This guy doesn't do this because he's hardly in the story at all, and even when he is, it's usually in dream mode. This makes the problem/solution relationship between the two key characters dysfunctional, which transforms what could have been a fast pace plot into the twitchy, annoying, squealing speed of a shopping cart with a wayward wheel; no matter how hard you try to get it to move in the right direction, it just continues to delay your progress and make you crazy. And then, in the end, the resolution is so quick and ridiculous, I was almost expecting the criminal to say, "I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those pesky kids!'
There was a bit of nostalgia in this book for me since I was in college around the same time as Sara. I remember that life distinctly. If I had written this about my own life, there would have been far less romance, a lot more Oprah, and equivalent bowls of cereal for dinner. That being said, I would never write a book about when I was in college because no one would want to read it, on the account of it was really boring and did nothing to progress much of anything--including my career (thanks a lot BA in History.)
I am impressed with the number of reviews this book has on Amazon. Two hundred forty-nine reviews is nothing to sneeze at. And the average is 3.8 so some of them are really good reviews. Maybe the other books in the series are better. I'm not sure I will ever find out. I do like the cover design, and while there were certainly proofreading errors, the only ones that really got to me were the titles in quotation marks instead of italics. I gave Dream Student three stars on Amazon. You can find my review here, and if you find it helpful, please hit the "yes" button next to the review. You can try out Dream Student for yourself by purchasing it here. It is usually priced at 99 cents, but right now it is free. Let me know what you think!
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