Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
Like Caitlin, my emotions are all out of whack. If I’m not careful, I may even resort to sucking my thumb, screaming at random times and intervals, rolling around on the grass, flopping on my bed, or sticking my feet up in the air and playing dead. It’s really hard to say what I might do, and if I tried to pin it down, my response would be filled with conjecture, and I prefer to deal in facts.
The fact is I hated this novel. Hated it with a passion, because it discussed abuse, and I prefer to look at the world through rose-colored glasses and deal in unicorns and rainbows and Popsicle sticks and ice cream sandwiches. But this is one world that is filled with a vast emptiness that extends for miles and miles.
When I go to sleep, I dream of Junior Mints and Butterfingers and Milk Duds. I certainly do not wake up screaming in the night, or cover myself in cold sweats and silently stare out of open windows with my mouth offered up in the open position. I certainly don’t have a negative view of the world.
So, yeah, it was hard for me to understand someone that might. Not just hard, it was nearly impossible, as I struggled with it throughout the course of this novel. DREAMLAND was a virtual world for me, and it was filled with potholes and minefields and .44 Magnums pointed in my direction. The gun didn’t go off thankfully, but it was darn close, and it was pretty damn big.
Rogerson pinpointed everything I hate about this world. No, hate is probably too strong a word. But extreme dislike might not be far off the mark. He might even qualify as a beautiful bastard, I don’t know. And, frankly, Caitlin put up with way too much of his shit, and she needed to develop a few more thoughts for herself. Not maybe, this is a definitive requirement.
Otherwise, this was a beautifully written novel with fully developed characters and passionate prose and a flowing storyline that kept me on my toes. Had I liked either of the main characters, I might have even rated this novel higher.