Dream State
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This book was all over the place.
The beginning was very Hallmarky. I hate to use that word with a negative connotation, seeing as my Dad owned Hallmark stores for 10+ years (a Beanie Baby hates to see him coming!), but in this case, I mean that the writing felt hacky and the relationships felt cheesy. Especially compared to The Wedding People, which captured the nuance of wedding jitters so perfectly, Dream State didn’t seem to be doing anything original with the wedding trope it presented.
But then, all of a sudden, it surprised me. It started to be less expository, more realistic, and deeper in its themes. About halfway through, it transformed and confronted the messiness of both platonic and romantic relationships without sugarcoating things. It truly became an entirely different book! The writing became more vivid as Puchner approached heavy topics with honesty and rawness.
That being said, I still have my qualms. Time skips around way too haphazardly; there are big jumps, small jumps, and reversals. As a result, it spread itself too thin, and many characters were underexplored. Of note, the characters are all pretty unlikeable, but I think that’s a testament to the reality of their situations and doesn’t belong in the minus column.
Zooming out in terms of book publishing in general, I’ve noticed that recent books include contemporary subjects, specifically climate change and COVID. I thought that Wild Dark Shore hammered the climate change narrative a little too hard, but I’m wondering in retrospect if that’s just because it was my first exposure to this modern lit trend. Dream State centered its climate change angle around skiing, and I’m not a ski girly at all– I actively hated my one-and-done ski trip as an adult– but the book does a good job of weaving the narrative that it’s hard to find meaning in a world when it seems the very fabric of it is escaping you before your eyes. It contributed to the character’s feelings that their lives had become total messes and there was no turning back.
As a whole, Dream State gets 2 out of 5 flames. I appreciate its evolution, but I really can’t get over the icky beginning, and I wish that the latter half had been more focused.
