Reverie (ARC Review)

Reverie might be one of the most original YA ‘magic’ books I’ve seen in a while. 

What first drew the attention of many readers (and, eventually, myself) was the inclusion of lgbtq+ characters and a drag queen sorceress. After hearing a multitude of other people talk about reading this book, I finally gave in and requested a copy. 

But what’s special about this novel, to me, isn’t its queerness; Reverie has one of the most interesting ‘fantasy’ elements I’ve seen in a  long time and a structure that turns the usual YA storyline (literally) on its head.

I was intrigued from the beginning, in which we are thrust into Kane’s world after he has had an accident and wakes with very little memory of his life, relationships, and (most importantly) how he ended up in the crash to begin with…and how he got out. The first part of the story immediately sets up an unconventional structure in comparison to most YA novels like it, which was intriguing to me.

But the tension didn’t let up as we learn how and why Kane has lost his memories. My eagerness to flip page after page didn’t cease as I was immersed deeper and deeper into a world not so unlike our own, but which begs the question; what happens when our imagined realities are better than the real ones? And what if those realities came true?

I loved the idea of the reveries, both in what they were and how they were realized on the page. The inclusion of real-life subtitles I found to be particularly clever and funny.

At first, I thought that seeing the reveries described again and again would lose its charm, but each was so original, well-imagined and described, and made so much sense (eventually) in the context of their creation that I never got sick of them. In fact, I probably would have sat through hundreds of more pages of different reveries and enjoyed every second.

In fact, overall, I thought that this story could have been longer. Although, I’m not sure if that’s just because I wanted more of the reveries or because I needed more.

Some aspects, I thought, could have used a bit more time. For example, I might have liked to get to know our characters more, and let them establish (or re-establish) their relationships with Kane over a longer span of time. More ‘I wonder if I should trust them’ and ‘I don’t know what to think or who to trust’ angst wouldn’t have been ill-placed in my opinion…which is something I never thought I’d say about a YA fantasy like this…

I also thought there could have been more exploration into how the ‘magic system’ fit into a world so like ours and how it came about, although there’s enough already in there that I was never actually confused or felt like I missed information. (AKA I don’t understand why so many reviewers have said it was too confusing to keep reading…)

But even when I had some doubts about the story, the writing style in this book is so whimsical yet uncomplicated that it never loses its charm to read. Unfortunately, it was somewhat peppered with grammatical errors. 

Usually with an advanced copy, I wouldn’t point out spelling mistakes and errors, but considering that I got this copy so close to publication and that it specified that no errors were supposed to present, I can’t say that it didn’t somewhat affect my reading experience. Most of the errors were so simplistic, and could have been so easily fixed with just one more go-over; for example, there was an instance in which Kane’s name was misspelled as “Kate” which caused me some moments of confused page flipping.

I rated Reverie 4.5 out of 5 stars.