Dreamshores Review

Melissa Souza
Aug 23, 2016
3 min read

*** Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review! ***

2 stars!!! The plot was what really drew me to this book. I liked the idea behind this story but somehow I feel it could have been developed better. I will explain this further. Dreamshores starts off with a ten year old girl named Sierra who develops a passion for Russel Boylan's stop motion animations. The story then jumps ahead 10 years where an adult Sierra seems to have lost her calling and finds herself working on board a super yacht. After a catastrophic event involving the vessel, the crew find themselves shipwrecked on an island inhabited by fierce creatures right out of a movie. From reading the book, there is a kind of "Lost" meets "Jurassic Park" vibe which I thought was cool. But somehow, I felt the writing to be way over the top. Don't get me wrong, I love books filled with descriptions. But with Dreamshores, it felt tedious almost bordering on philosophical. Maybe some other readers might enjoy this, but I found that it hampered the story as it tended to drag on. "Sierra felt like a turkey on the Thanksgiving table, a vulnerable hunk of meat and the unfortunate center of attention, fully eyeballed before the actual knife descended and the carving began and exposed all her insides." The story does deliver a variety of twists. There were a lot of action scenes within the book which I found really interesting especially towards the end, but I felt the energy waned in these parts due to the time spent on describing every motion and scene it detail. In essence, the pacing was not what I would expect in an creature feature or adventure novel. I want to feel my pulse racing. I didn't get that kind of feeling. With regards to Sierra's character, I liked how she was very alternative in her style. I also liked how she was trying to find her purpose in life and asked the big questions. She also seems to come across as a person who cares. However, we don't get to see much character development because there isn't much interaction between characters. The only relationship I gathered was between her and Boylan, from a mentor and protege point of view, which I found fascinating. But I wanted to see more. What made her tick and so on. I also felt like there was a spark between her and KB. But somehow, this angle wasn't pursued much. I would have liked to see how their friendship evolved even if it wasn't in a romantic way. As to the overall worldbuilding, I thought it was done well. It had an almost dream like quality to it. The creatures were not overly scary or imaginative in my opinion. But I can say, I did appreciate the uniqueness of the story. I liked how the story revolved around stop motion animation and I learned a fair bit about it. I did enjoy the parts where the author doesn't stick to just the basics and makes one think beyond the story.