Dreamland , by Alyson Noel

Paperback, 210 pages

Published September 13th 2011 by Square Fish

ISBN

0312563752 (ISBN13: 9780312563752)

edition language

English

original title

Dreamland

series

Riley Bloom #3

 

Riley’s finding that the afterlife can be a lonely place when all you do is focus on work. So she goes to the place where dreams happen, hoping to find a way to contact her sister, Ever. She meets the director, who tells her about the two ways to send dreams. As a Dream Jumper, a person can jump into a dreamer’s dream, share a message, and participate. As a Dreamweaver, an entire dream can be created in a studio and sent to the dreamer. But Dreamweaving was outlawed decades ago, and the studio was boarded up. Thinking it’s her only way to reach out to her sister, Riley goes in search of the old studio. There she finds a ghost boy, who’s been creating and sending nightmares to people for years. In order to stop him and reach out to Ever, Riley is going to have to confront and overcome her own fears.

 

My Review

Life is perhaps ever more confusing for Riley than it has ever been, especially considering the fact that the council of the here and now have congratulated her for what she has managed to do, and no other soul catcher has. Yet they have also requested that she goes on a break, when she has just been on one so that she can be given more complicated tasks to meet her personality. However Riley takes this as dismissal especially when it seems like Bodhi really does dislike her and moves on to the beautiful cheerleader girl that everyone wants to be. The kind of girl that everyone looks up to, who you expect to be a bitch but who is actually very kind and considering. You can see that Riley is a little lost for words here in this one. She has no friends per se, her family are all individuals now, they are out doing what they want, how they want and when they want. The only person she really wants to see is her sister Ever but shes still in the land of the living. you can automatically see the twisting confusion that is going on within her soul. The fact that she wants to grow up so that others pay attention to her like Bodhi does with the cheerleader girl. She wants to have a social life that isnt all about the soul catching. she wants to be noticed.

 

you can understand the complexity of her life and it really seemed to emphasize the lonliness that she is living and it makes you automatically questions how we all push society out of the picture when we have a task to do. For me the book made me question the day that I wanted to be thirteen. I didn't really have anyone to look up to in regards to being 13, I was the first in amongst the siblings, but it made me smile when I read about riley wanting to be like her sister, cool, calm and groovy. She wants to be like that and she wants to fit in, and she wants her sisters advice. However the only way to do that is to go to the land of the dreams, but Bodhi has told her this is forbidden. Yet how come others seem to be going  there? is it really forbidden when there is a matter of free will. You automatically know that riley is going to don what she needs to do to get the advice she wants, and this means she is likely to take the quickest route that she can, whether it be dangerous or not.

 

The problem is, that she clearly wasn't expecting to run into the trouble that she did and the trouble that she ran into didn't make her anymore mature or alive, it merely showed all the things that she is afraid of. Her fears mark her as still young and you begin to understand the reason as to why she is stuck at the age she is. She is not learning, not changing the attitude, she is still determined to do things her way, despite the fact that the fears were shown to her again and again and again in order to make her understand. I do think that there is something striking and differing about this series, but they are very very short. Yes I understand the fact that if they were longer they would not be as great and as powerful as they perhaps are now, but at the same time you can't help but reflect the fact that you do want a little more depth to the whole plot. None the less they certainly have a high sense of character to them.

My rating