Book Review: Reverie by Ryan La Sala

 Title: Reverie

Author: Ryan La Sala

Series/Standalone: Standalone

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, LGBT

Pages: 397

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Year Published: 2019

Format Audiobook

"Inception meets The Magicians in the most imaginative YA debut of the year!

All Kane Montgomery knows for certain is that the police found him half-dead in the river. He can't remember how he got there, what happened after, and why his life seems so different now. And it's not just Kane who's different, the world feels off, reality itself seems different.

As Kane pieces together clues, three almost-strangers claim to be his friends and the only people who can truly tell him what's going on. But as he and the others are dragged into unimaginable worlds that materialize out of nowhere- the gym warps into a subterranean temple, a historical home nearby blooms into a Victorian romance rife with scandal and sorcery- Kane realizes that nothing in his life is an accident. And when a sinister force threatens to alter reality for good, they will have to do everything they can to stop it before it unravels everything they know. 

This wildly imaginative debut explores what happens when the secret worlds that people hide within themselves come to light."

My Rating: 1/5

I just don't understand the enjoyment that some are finding from this story. Yes, there are LGBTQ characters, but the plot is all over the place, the characters are not well described/laid out. And I honestly just don't think that the villain just wasn't what I needed it to be. Villianizing someone in drag just didn't feel right for me. I didn't think that the idea behind the book was bad, it just needed either more time to develop relationships with the characters, and a build-up to the world, or it needed to have fewer characters. It was just trying to do too much for what it was.

Thanks for reading,

Sidny