A Love Song for Dreamers by Piper Lawson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
From slightly off key to perfectly in tune. I just can't get enough. Tyler and Annie strike all the right chords to reek havoc with the heart. Lawson goes into overdrive when it comes to stirring up emotions. After the Wicked series, my heart felt like it might never recover. It recovered just in time to be broken again by a couple bittersweet Rivals determined to run away with a piece of my soul.
by Karen Thompson Walker
I've been caught out once again by a book written in present tense. Why, oh why is this a thing?
The story is about a strange virus that makes people fall asleep and not wake up, but remain dreaming. It was an interesting premise, but because present tense is so difficult to read I couldn't really get into the story.
Some interesting ideas in there, but it's just not for me.
The story of a "sleeping sickness" virus that sweeps through a small, isolated college town. It was recommended in an NPR article on epidemic/plague fiction as reflective of our current situation:
In parallel with today's pandemic, the characters in Walker's novel confront a shortage of face masks. There is a panicked run on supermarkets. Waves through a window to loved ones under quarantine. Talk of it all being a hoax. And, just as now, the impossibility of knowing what's to come.
And truthfully, that's the most interesting part of this book. It started well, with interesting enough characters and storylines to lift it past my annoyance with the present-tense stylings and Cassandra Campbell's breathily droning narration, but really lost momentum in the second half. At that point, I couldn't ignore the sheer ridiculousness of the scientific/medical basis of this disease, diagnosis, and treatment anymore, and the last few chapters devolved into some navel-gazing about the nature of life and dreams and relationships that just didn't work for me. I was a little relieved when I got to The End.
But the first half was good enough for an overall 3 star rating.
Audiobook, borrowed from my public library via Overdrive.
On the one hand, this book is taking forever for anything to actually happen. On the other, it's still oddly interesting as we get to know the characters and figure out what is going on in the wider world through each one's experiences.
Even Cassandra Campbell's droning voice doesn't spoil it. How does she get so many audio jobs?
I came across this article on NPR today and decided to give this book and the Geraldine Brooks one a try. Since this one was in my library, I went ahead and borrowed it. I might just hate it on audio, though, because Cassandra Campbell is narrating it and she annoys me mightily.
Sorry, Peter Cline, you've been pushed back!
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