Author: Lucy Keating
Publisher: Harper Teen
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 336
Format: eBook
Release Date: April 12, 2016
Goodreads • The Book Depository
For as long as Alice can remember, she has dreamed of Max. Together they have traveled the world and fallen deliriously, hopelessly in love. Max is the boy of her dreams—and only her dreams. Because he doesn’t exist.
But when Alice walks into class on her first day at a new school, there he is. It turns out, though, that Real Max is nothing like Dream Max, and getting to know each other in reality isn’t as perfect as Alice always hoped.
When their dreams start to bleed dangerously into their waking hours, the pair realize that they might have to put an end to a lifetime of dreaming about each other. But when you fall in love in your dreams, can reality ever be enough?You know, if this entire book was written differently, it’d be very easy to make the main character the antagonist.
Not because they’re all excellently-made grey character, but because her actions are similar to so many villains in your generic chick flicks.
Max – Real Max, not her Dream Max – has a girlfriend. Her name is Celeste. And no, she is not a The Other Woman cliche. She’s nice, she’s likeable, she’s not a btch. And she’s friendly to Alice. SHE’S NICE, PEOPLE. For the first time in forever (i’m sorry don’t kill me) we’ve got a “love rival” (I use this term loosely) that does not immediately be a btch and hate on our protagonist because reasons.
Alice even acknowledges it too. She says it herself.
But guess what? She still goes after her boyfriend.
She wants to get in between this happy couple – Max and Celeste, who obviously are very, very into each other because of apparently since she dreams of Max, he was hers first.
Like, no.
I get it, Alice. I really do. You love him (although you’ve never met him) and you know he’s your soulmate (despite not knowing much about him.) Uh huh. Got it. /sarcasm
The romance was also very boring. I felt no spark, no chemistry that I could sense. The building of it between characters was almost non-existent. I could probably let it slide since they’ve fallen in love through their dreams, but I still wasn’t really feeling it. I was crossing fingers for an epic love story, something that transcended reality and brought dreams to life, but all I got was a weak road trip with stringy characters.
This book is not all kinds of awful, no. It’s more of a solid chuck of “meh.” Nothing potentially remarkable; the main conflict is resolved in a matter of lines, the romance is some junkworthy aspect that doesn’t do anything to help the already drab-characters, and the entire plot seems to follow a dull path of walking from Point A to Point B. It literally just went from Plot Point One to Plot Point Two, to Plot Point Three until it landed at Underwhelming Conclusion.
I was so excited for this book. I was picturing this intense love-hate relationship going on because of Real Max not being like Dream Max (sweet, caring, all the qualities of a dream boyfriend, you know the drill) and I was, well, disappointed.
The only redeeming point in this story was Oliver. Oliver, my baby.
In short, this book doesn’t stand out as particularly amazing, and while I did rip it a new one it’s not that that bad. It’s… eh.
