Sort of Review: Dream A Little Dream

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

While I slowly but surely work on two long posts about my recent travels (my St. Patrick's Day trip to Ireland and my spring break to France, Portugal, and Spain) I thought I would drop by quickly to talk about a book I finished on my flight back to Scotland.

my spring break looked a lot like this

I've made a previous post about Giovanna Fletcher, in which I talked about how she basically lives my dream life and inspires me, daily, to work on being what I want. I also admitted in that post that, while Giovanna inspires me and is quite successful, I don't always love her writing. My opinion on her writing is, of course, totally irrelevant, but I thought I'd share my feelings anyway because her books always get me thinking.



My favorite kinds of books tend to be mysteries. All of last summer I had my face buried in different murder mystery novels - Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad Series, Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series, and Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train - but I decided on bringing something a little lighter along for my travels this spring break. I had to pop into Waterstones a few weeks ago to pick up a book (Ian Rankin's The Falls, perfectly suited to my taste) for class, and while I was there I ended up hovering around the 'F' shelf in the fiction section. Giovanna's newest book was on a buy one get one half off, so I picked it up, along with something a little more typical to my taste.

I'm being completely honest when I say I was absolutely ecstatic to read this book. I had to read Rankin's that week as it was for class, but I couldn't stop myself from sneaking in a few pages of Dream A Little Dream when I had free time.  I wasn't sure how I would like it - as I mentioned in my earlier post, I really enjoyed Billy and Me but didn't finish You're The One That I Want. I had higher hopes for this book, and I was not disappointed.

Giovanna's writing style doesn't seem to have changed between this book and Billy and Me, which was her first. That is, in my opinion, generally a good thing - I like when a writer has a particular style, when coming back to their books always feels like coming back to something familiar. The negative side of this, however, is that I'm not massively keen on her style. Despite that, though, I loved literally every single second of this book.

If Giovanna's style hasn't changed, her writing has definitely developed. I enjoyed the plot of Dream A Little Dream much more than the plot of Billy and Me - it felt more well developed, fuller, not quite as easy, if that makes sense. This book wasn't the beach read I was expecting it to be at all (it actually had me crying on the beach in Portugal) and I was so pleasantly surprised about that.

I found myself genuinely invested in this book (I was absolutely furious with Dan the entire time, and I don't think I've forgiven him yet. Sarah is a much better person than me) and I had to pace myself in order to make it last the entirety of my holiday. I loved the characters, although I wished some were developed further (namely Natalia and Alastair) and didn't like some of the weird shaming happening with Louisa, but all in all I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I finished the last 40 pages or so on my flight back to Scotland and wanted more immediately. I'm so keen to know more about Sarah and Real Brett, so I'm sure I'll read Dream a Little Christmas Dream soon, despite it not being Christmas season at all.

I'm glad I picked this book up, and I'm glad I brought it along on spring break. It's just over 400 pages long, but a pretty easy and quick read, which was just what I needed to help me decompress over break. It also reminded me how badly I want to write a book myself (Billy and Me did the same thing, I'm not sure what it is about Giovanna's books that do that to me) and inspired me to think up a few ideas myself.

No comments

Post a Comment