Book Review: In My Dreams

Title: In My Dreams

Author: Cameo Renae

Pages: 242

Rating: A for Acceptable

Review: Let me just start off by saying that this novel is a love story. There is no denying that and if you are heading into it thinking there isn't any, you are highly mistaken. But because it is a love novel, I seemed to have read it in a sort of biased way. And as much as I tried ignoring the love moments and focusing on what was going on, there were parts where I groaned and sighed because I couldn't take it. So for that I am not going to review it as a love novel and take a different route and focus more on the story and what revolved around it.

In My Dreams is about a girl named Lizzy who has this strange occurrence of dreaming about death. The strange part about it is that she is seeing the death play out as it happens in real life. It begins with Lizzy in a dream witnessing the death of her boyfriend Michael and from their it unfolds. The premise of the story really caught my attention, I wanted to see how Lizzy dealt with these “premonitions” you would say, and how she reacted towards them. Unfortunately we don’t get to see much of these premonitions as it begins with her boyfriends death and continues from there.

The novel continues with Lizzy trying to find out what happened to her boyfriend and who murdered him. Through-out the novel her boyfriend seems to contact her in her dreams where they get to experience things they could not while he was alive. He also warns her and helps her survive against this murderer who is now coming after her. The love moments seem to come during these dreams, such as going to an island, an flying and going down mountains of snow and such. Things that any couple would want to do together. Especially the flying part. Who wouldn’t want to fly? I kind of found myself rushing through these moments just so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. But, if you love romance, then it would be good for you.

Towards the end of the novel we are introduced to a couple of ideas that I thought could have been brought in the beginning or even the middle to make the novel longer and just even more interesting. One involves Lizzy’s talent with death and sets up for future novels that could introduce us to a nice mystery/paranormal series. The other part was this supernatural part that to me seemed a bit out of the ordinary for this type of book, but it could’ve set up for a darker novel in the future.

The writing style was good. It wasn’t at its best, but you often get that when novels aren’t published with high publishing companies. It wasn’t horrible to the point where you couldn’t read it, but if you have read a lot of novels, you can notice one or two mistakes here or there. But they seemed to add to the atmosphere of what the book was and didn‘t cause a disturbance. The characters were interesting, although I thought Lizzy could have been a stronger female character and not so dependant on her boyfriend. Some of her actions made me question her character, and one in particular seemed to throw her intelligence out the window. This part is towards the end of the book where this fight happens. Michael seemed like every girl’s dream but it took away from the reality. He was good for a book but not so much for the real world.

The supporting characters were interesting if I do say so myself. I wished some had bigger roles and more book time, just to add to their character and who they were. I also wish we could have seen more of the history behind the murderer seeing as I love to get inside their minds and find out why do the things they do. These couple of things could have helped make the novel longer and possibly much more complex. Although I think the author just wanted a regular run-through novel which worked.

All in all, I found this book entertaining. It is definitely a light, easy read that is good between heavier books. It’s fast, it’s intriguing, there is a lot of mystery going on. The love did throw me off a bit, but I am an adult male who much rather read action, and explosions and such, but everything else I felt was good enough to keep me reading and recommend it to people who just want something fun. So if your brain is tired of thick books with multiple complex plot-lines, check out In My Dreams by Cameo Ranae. Also, I have to say that these are my opinions on the book itself, not on the author or her as a writer in a whole. For all I know, she could write a new novel that’s about 500 pages long and it’ll blow my socks off.