In Restless Dreams by Wren Handman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.
Sylvia is a normal girl with huge, normal problems–her mother’s attempted suicide; trying to make friends in a rich prep school where she doesn’t belong; whether or not to trust the cute boy with the dangerous eyes. She thinks that’s more than she can handle, but she tests the limits of her endurance when she learns that she is the long-awaited Phantasmer, a human who can change the fabric of Fairy simply by believing in a new story.
Sylvia’s life is thrown off course as two warring Courts, the Seelie and Unseelie, both attempt to co-opt her gift to attack the other Court. All while she’s trying not to get kicked out of school for fighting. And it doesn’t help matters that the fairies begging for her help are both attractive young men–with their own agendas.
In Restless Dreams
Pages: 316.
Expected publication: January 28th 2020 by Parliament House Press
A fantastic surprise!
I like the kind of paranormal/fantasy where the girl is a regular human girl from the current time, living in our normal world, then she somehow gets pulled into this supernatural situation and has to come to terms with it. That is exactly how this book is and I really enjoyed it. This story was about a girl named Sylvia who lives in a small town in Nevada and she leaves early from a party after her boyfriend breaks up with her so he can dance with another girl. Sylvia gets home to find her mother on the floor after swallowing a bottle of pills.
Sylvia and her younger brother Eric, wait at the hospital for their very wealthy father who lives in New York and once he arrives he ends up taking them with him to live in his mansion in New York. They begin attending an exclusive private school and from the very first day, Sylvia gets on the bad side of one of the mean girls in the school, Cassidy. Though she also makes friends with some of the popular crowd as well.
This section of the book goes forward pretty much as a standard bully romance type of story, which I like. But also it serves the purpose to set up the fantasy/paranormal part. It also serves the purpose of developing the characters very well and world building. We get to see the way Sylvia interacts with her friends, her father and her brother. We see that Sylvia is lonely and nothing seems to work out right for her.
I don’t want to give things away so I will only say that Sylvia meets some men from the abstract lands (A.k.a. Fairy realm) which is another dimension that sits on top of ours. Suffice it to say that humans including Sylvia aren’t supposed to be able to see them. However due to extenuating circumstances she can. There is what’s called the shadow which is a sort of barrier between the two realms that is where one of the two men likes to hang out. Sylvia names him The Stranger and he is a commoner from the Unseelie court and is a bit of a trickster and likes to try to mess with humans from the shadow. The other guy, whom Sylvia finds out is named Royan, is a knight from the Seelie Court and is very handsome and gallant.
From here, the story is more like a Fantasy and an adventure but Sylvia still has to account for herself in our world. It isn’t so easy to be the lone human who can see things other people can’t. It gets harder for her to explain what she is doing. But that is part of what I enjoy about stories like this. You can see the dilemma and it feels like it could be a real situation (if the Fae really did exist).
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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