Review: Dreamland by Robert L. Anderson

Odea Donahue has been able to travel through people’s dreams since she was six years old. Her mother taught her the three rules of walking: Never interfere. Never be seen. Never walk the same person’s dream more than once. Dea has never questioned her mother, not about the rules, not about the clocks or the mirrors, not about moving from place to place to be one step ahead of the unseen monsters that Dea’s mother is certain are right behind them.

Then a mysterious new boy, Connor, comes to town and Dea finally starts to feel normal. As Connor breaks down the walls that she’s had up for so long, he gets closer to learning her secret. For the first time she wonders if that’s so bad. But when Dea breaks the rules, the boundary between worlds begins to deteriorate. How can she know what’s real and what’s not?

Kindle Edition, 336 pages

Expected publication: September 22nd 2015 by HarperTeen 

Genre: Fantasy/Young Adult

Kristine's Thoughts:

** I received an advanced readers copy from HarperTeen via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!**

The idea of this story was brilliant but the execution left a lot to be desired in my honest opinion. The synopsis had me really excited. This was not like any story I had read before. Dream walking held great potential for some unique story telling.

Odea was not like other kids. She could walk in other people's dreams. In fact, if she didn't she would get really sick. Everything was fine as long as she didn't break the rules. This had been her reality since she was six years old. She was also not like other kids because her mom was constantly moving them from place to place. Mirrors were not allowed in their house and it was filled with clocks.

Then Odea met Connor, who had secrets of his own, and everything changed. She broke the rules in order to walk in his dreams more than once. Strange things started happening and the her mother disappeared. Sounds exciting right?

Well....

It was actually kind of boring. The dreams, when Odea was actually in them (which wasn't often) were more than a little dull. There seamed to be an excruciatingly long built up to the dream world that fell more than a little short. The reader only got a brief glimpse of Odea's world and it was unfortunately not very exciting. It was all a little flat and anti-climatic. I found my mind wandering and was guilty of skimming a few pages.

The story had great potential but I felt like there were too many things that were not relevant to the story taking up pages. I also thought that there needed to be more "dream world" and that it needed to be a little more exciting in order to hold the readers interest. It wasn't a terrible book but it was just a little dull.

About the Author

Robert L. Anderson grew up in Brooklyn, where he once spent an entire summer mastering every level of the video game Doom. He graduated from college in 2004 with a degree in philosophy and an encyclopedic knowledge of the different ways to cook ramen noodles. Since then, he has lived in five states and twelve countries, and on three continents. He has returned to Brooklyn, but hasn’t kicked his video game addiction. Dreamland is his first novel.

Connect with Robert

Website/Twitter/Goodreads