Published: April 14th 2015 by Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Source: Library
Format: eBook
Rating: 4 out of 5
Summary:
Mysterious doors with lizard-head knobs. Talking stone statues. A crazy girl with a hatchet. Yes, Liv's dreams have been pretty weird lately. Especially the one where she's in a graveyard at night, watching four boys conduct dark magic rituals.
The strangest part is that Liv recognizes the boys in her dream. They're classmates from her new school in London, the school where she's starting over because her mom has moved them to a new country (again). But what's really scaring Liv is that the dream boys seem to know things about her in real life, things they couldn't possibly know--unless they actually are in her dreams? Luckily, Liv never could resist a good mystery, and all four of those boys are pretty cute...
Review:
Dream a Little Dream is a little complicated to explain, but a great book and would love for more people to read it. So for my review I decided to break it down into parts. Here's what I liked:
The book is told in first person through Liv. Liv is a sassy girl trying to adapt to her new home at her mother’s boyfriends house. After she learns that her classmates were dabbling in black magic to resurrect a Demon, she isn’t afraid to offer her help even though it puts her in danger. That doesn’t mean she kept a serious face though. Liv is hilarious and sarcastic as she tries to not laugh while her classmates drew circles and chanted Latin words for a ritual. Liv’s humor made the book enjoyable and drew me in in the first pages.
The dreams. A big part of what made me want to read the book was the twist on the dreams. After moving, Liv starts getting dreams involving the four popular boys at her school. The five interact in their dreams and are all able to remember them afterwards. Liv’s newfound ability allows her to go into other people’s dreams and that plus the black magic is where the excitement happens.
The plot. The main story line involves the dreams and the black magic to revive the Demon. It was easy to read and didn’t drag on at all throughout the book. The “filler” portion of the book where Liv explores her dreams and investigated the boys wasn't boring even though there was no major problem in those parts.
NO LOVE TRIANGLE/SQUARE. The four supermodels of the school that all the girls drool over are Grayson, Henry, Arthur, and Jasper. Grayson being her soon-to-be stepbrother is obviously knocked out as an opinion (but if I had to choose a boy it would totally be him). From the premise, I assumed that they were all going to fight over Liv, but it was pretty obvious who Liv’s love interest is from the beginning. In a way, it could be described as instalove but I think it worked in this situation. The romance is actually very cute. I think it could be described as the early dating/crushing phase of a relationship because it wasn't too overpowering or a main focus of the story. Even with this many boys, they were all different. Grayson is the cliche protective older brother, Henry is the quiet and mysterious one, Jasper oozes in flirtatious charm, and Arthur, the poss prince of the school.
What I think could’ve been worked on:
The world building. For such an interesting world with all the dreams and demons, it wasn’t explained very well. It was never explained why Liv was able to enter other people’s dreams. The boys had a tendency to straight up ignore Liv's questions when it got "too dangerous" and while it was supposed to keep up the image of the mysterious, beautiful boys, it got annoying and left a lot of questions.
Overall, I enjoyed Dream a Little Dream, and will be looking forward to reading the rest of the series soon. I found the first book very fun and hope that continues. Gier’s Ruby Red will also be added onto my to-read list.
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