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Kane Montgomery is returning to the scene of the crime. He’s accused of taking his parents’ car and driving into a historical site, an old mill in his town in Connecticut. But he doesn’t remember a thing about it; he just knows he woke up in the hospital after being fished out of the nearby river. So he’s desperately trying to piece things together — it’s not just the police who want answers; he wants them most of all because it’s his memory that’s gone.
Thanks to being gay, which most people seemed to intuit before he even did, Kane has always been made fun of and left on the fringes. He’s used to being alone. So he’s pleased, though confused, to start figuring out he has had a group of friends the past few months, the period of time he can’t remember. And they are the only ones who are “lucid,” remembering who they are, when the cheerleaders, football team and other kids from their school all of a sudden are players in a very weird and scary dream made reality. They even have magical powers to fight inside this “reverie” and are the only ones who can bring it to an end, returning the whole dream/imagined world to the mind of the kid who thought it up.
The reveries keep happening, and Kane encounters two other people in and near them who may or may not be on his side: Poesy, a drag queen who is able to explain exactly what is going on to a confused Kane, including the source of his magic and that of their group the “Others,” and Dean, a good-looking guy who’s new to their school and who seems to have a history with Kane as well.
Despite their powers, Kane and the Others may be outmatched by an entity who wants to use the reveries to create a whole new reality. They must decide whom to trust and how to use their gifts to keep their world from being swallowed up in a ghastly new one.
Reverie has a clever and promising premise and follows some good plot lines, but it fell flat for me. Despite it being marketed as a young adult book and with some elements being most appropriate for an older, YA audience, three-quarters of it read like a middle-grade book, with the phrasing and style I would expect from stories aimed at that younger age group. So it was jarring when there were some instances of strong language and more mature content. I also felt that the author was trying too hard at times to use some “impressive” vocabulary (and it was a bit annoying when I noted he had used “desiccated” three times within a chapter or two). It didn’t feel organic.
All in all, some good bones, but the flesh needed more work and maybe defter hands crafting it. The author is a member of the LGBTQIA community himself and says in the acknowledgments that he appreciates the opportunity to be able to live in a time when he can publish this book and have it be there for youths like he was. But it still seemed too often like a statement piece rather than just a book where these LGBTQ characters live and grow naturally within the story.
Rated: Moderate, for four uses of strong language and less than a dozen instances of milder language. Violence happens throughout, with spots of some gore and blood but not a lot. Sexual content includes instances of several gay and lesbian couples kissing, and one instance where signs are given that a teen couple may have had sex.
* I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
