The Dreamer by E.J. Mellow – Book Review

December 2, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The first in a spellbinding contemporary fantasy trilogy, The Dreamer has been awarded a Silver for Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi from the eLit Book Awards, a Finalist Medal for Best Cover Design from The Next Generation Indie Book Awards and has appeared in globally distributed book subscription boxes such as the Sci-fi & Fantasy Book Box.

It’s night. Always night. Dreams guard against the evil forged by nightmares. Infinite shooting stars illuminate a moonless sky. A city stands alone, surrounded by a darkened field. On its fringes, a man watches one star separate from the masses and fall. What survives the crash will unveil a secret centuries long hidden.

Molly hasn’t slept well since the night of her twenty-fourth birthday. Being struck by lightning might have something to do with it, but then again, her chicken did look a little undercooked at dinner. Whatever the culprit, her life quickly catapults from mundane to insane as, night after night, Molly is transported through her once dreamless sleep to a mysterious land illuminated by shooting stars.

There she meets the captivating but frustrating Dev, and together they discover Molly possesses a power coveted by his people—the ability to conjure almost anything she desires into existence. Seduced by the possibilities of this gift, Molly shifts her attention from waking life toward the man, the magic, and the world found in her dreams.

But Molly must ask herself—does something truly exist if you only see it when you close your eyes?

Faced with the threat of losing everything—her job, best friend, boyfriend, and most importantly, that little thing called her sanity—Molly will learn just how far she’ll go to uncover what is real and what is merely a figment of her imagination.

“And then there are the dreams that feel as authentic as reality itself, that seem to exist just as your own life does. Where the emotions you experience there carry over to when you’re awake. They are so real, so genuine, that you begin to question your own sanity. And you know that when the day comes that you finally stop dreaming them, you will never stop remembering.”

Sometimes dreams can seem so real that you aren’t even sure whether or not you actually are dreaming. Those are the types of dreams I crave, the ones that feel so real, that are so close to being the kind of reality that I want that I couldn’t imagine waking up again. But none of those dreams could ever compare to the kind that Molly has, and I still don’t know whether I want to be in her shoes or not.

See, it all started when Molly was going home after celebrating her 24th birthday with her amazing attorney boyfriend Jared. Maybe it would have been better for her to play hooky that night instead of going home to work because that’s when it happened. The whole getting struck by lightning and almost dying thing. Kind of puts a damper on birthday celebrations, right?

Fast-forward to her time in the hospital, while she was in her mini coma, and she ends up dreaming for the first time in her life. And for some reason she dreams about this field with a single tree, with a bunch of stars in the sky, and this mysterious guy dressed in all black. Who is this guy, and has she seen him before? Is he someone from her past that is suddenly making an appearance in her subconscious? Whoever he is, he is certainly dreamy (pun-intended).

Molly basically starts to dream about this land, which she finds out is called Terra, basically a land of dreams. She also finds out that there’s so much more to her than she thought, and while she may have already been pretty sure of herself from the moment we met her, she learns that she is meant for greatness. It almost reminded me of that movie, Night at the Museum, where Theodore Roosevelt talked about greatness. Yeah, that’s pretty much Molly right now.

Not to mention Dev is a book babe, and I’m so obsessed with him that I wish I could dream about him as much as Molly did. Granted, the time that Molly spent with him was 50% rolling her eyes at him and 50% wanting to take his clothes off, but I know there is so much more to this guy. I just want to know his backstory, like who was he before he became this bad ass head of military specialist that is fascinated by Molly and how human she is.

So did I like the book? Loved it. Do I want the physical book as well as the Kindle version? Absolutely. Do I want Dev to myself?

You bet your ass I do.

5 /5 ★

Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Caroll

March 21, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll’s putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing “The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new.” There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters–extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be “curiouser and curiouser,” seemingly without moral or sense.

For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice’s new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the “regular course” in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel’s illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll’s instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story.

Divergent – Veronica Roth

March 21, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Paperback features over fifty pages of bonus materials, including a sneak peek of Insurgent, an author Q&A, a discussion guide, a Divergent playlist, faction manifestos, and more!

In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she’s chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she’s kept hidden from everyone because she’s been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

Veronica Roth is the New York Times bestselling author of Divergent, the first in a trilogy of dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.