Review: Dreaming Dangerous by Lauren DeStefano

I have been a fan of Lauren for years now. And have read a lot of her books, but not all of them, not yet. I have read all her middle grade books, though, and my god, they are so very good. It took me some time before I finally read this newest one, but I got to it. And I'm so glad that I did. Because it was such an amazing book.

Parts of this book was perfect. And I'm pretty sure I loved it more than all her other books. Yet I'm only giving it four stars. Which I do have some reasons for. Most parts of this book were so good and I enjoyed reading it so very much. The writing was excellent too. But it is a four star for me, because it ended too fast. Hmph.

But first I will mention that this book was all kinds of stunning and good. I found the writing to be awesome and I so adored reading from the point of view of twelve year old Plum. She was just the cutest. And I loved getting to know her a little bit. She has lived her whole life at a school in the woods, a school for children with special gifts. I was so curious about all of it and I wanted to know more. Plum have the gift of dreaming with her three best friends. They dream together each night, fighting monsters and doing dangerous things. They are truly the best of friends, and I loved that so. Because Plum, Vien, Gwendle and Artem were the most adorable together. I loved reading about them. Especially loved that Plum started to feel something else for Vien. So so cute.

This book tells the story of Plum and her friends. About how they live at this school, the things they learn, and what happens to them. They all write down their dreams and share them with the teacher. But things are getting strange. And Artem is suddenly missing. I loved how they searched for him, how they learned new things about their school, who not to trust. I liked the plot in this book a whole bunch. I liked learning about their powers and how they came to be. At least the one page I got about that, haha. Needed more.

But yeah. While I loved parts of this book a whole lot, it was not enough. The book was too short. I mean, sure, it's a middle grade, but I have often read middle grades that are around five hundred pages long. I felt that this story was too short for this book. The ending was rushed. Beyond rushed. Many answers left behind. It was sort of happy, yet not too, and nothing was explained more. It was suddenly just done with. Yeah. It wasn't that good. Too rushed and with way too few answers. I loved the book, but not the ending.

And so much else could have been better if this book had been longer too. It took me less than two hours to read this one. I wish it had taken me two days, because I felt like it could have been so much longer. I wanted to know more about Plum. I wanted to discover more about her feelings for Vien. I wanted more of her friendship with all three of them. And I wanted to know more about their shared dreams. Especially wanted more of the ending, what happened next, how it all happened. Sigh. I wish this book was longer.

But despite this book not being everything I wanted it to be, since it was too short, and ended too fast, it was still such a great read. And I loved Plum a whole bunch. And I very much adored reading her story. I only know that I would have loved it so so much more had it been given more pages and more time to be excellent. I'm hoping Lauren might one day write the rest of this story, because to me it was far from over. Still. Dreaming Dangerous was a stunning book full of great friendships and I'm so happy I read this book.

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