Opening line:
"He thought about the girl again."

So starts the book about Zat and Babe; one from the future, the other from the present day Florida. They officially meet in Babe's dreams where they become friends and more.

This story is an interesting twist on sci-fi/fantasty YA romance. I enjoyed the writing, I enjoyed the characters and I wanted to keep reading because I couldn't figure out the connection between past and present and how the two characters were going to make their relationship work. I'm still a little hazy on that part...
I didn't feel like the characters were fleshed out and the story line didn't completely resolve for me. But it was an intriguing read and I think teens will enjoy it.
I did like he cover!

Thanks to netgalley for the early read!

So Dream Me is someone's really interesting, yet bizarre idea. Unfortunately this idea appears to have been put in the hands of an amateur writer who decided to use every teen book cliche ever.
We have:
- insta-love
- one setting is dystopian
- girl whose been moved away from her friends/boyfriend
- awkward teenage moments
- the beautiful boy everyone loves
- the popular girl
- a small town high school

This results in lines like:
"We were inseparable, until we were separated last week, just two days after my seventeenth birthday."

" "I'll always be right here." He reaches out and places the palm of his hand lightly against the contour of my cheek. My face flushes hot at his touch."

The first line above is about her back home boyfriend. The line below it is from her insta-love dream boy that has invaded her mind. Sadly that's not even the worst of it.

The worst of it is the writing format.
It's very cheap. It doesn't endear readers to your writing when you use an excuse for your weird/poor writing style. Dream Me is broken into two styles of storytelling. First is the generic, this is what is happening narrative (all well and good). Second is our lead gals blog posts (including comments). Except that the blog posts are written EXACTLY like the regular narrative. Including dialogue and third person perspective. And while Kathryn Bella has the lead gal explain away her weird writing it's just not good enough. No one actually writes blog posts like this!!!
Now I know why she chose blog posts and comments as it was apparent to me from the first time a comment shows up from "Dream me" what was likely going on. It was at this point I knew I was done with the book. While I read another 20 pages or so there was just no saving this book.

I'm willing to bet (and I did not skim ahead) I could spoil this ending without ever reading it; it's that obvious. At the end of the day however I don't even care enough to skim forward and find out.

So I have mixed feelings about this book, at first I didn't like the blog sections as I felt it disrupted the flow of the story, but then when I got into it more I found those sections were the ones I was looking forward to the most.

I thought the end was weird, great ending, but weird as I would have liked an explanation...??!!! I was just getting into it when it finished, I really wanted more!!!

I would have liked to read more on the dreams, I feel too much was focused on her day to day life, (not that it wasn't interesting) I enjoyed getting to know Mai and LeGrand, they were both great friends for Babe. I just would have liked more on Zat, I felt like it only skimmed the surface of his character, as he seemed the most fascinating to me.

I loved the concept for this story, it's so original and is one of the reasons I kept reading.

I actually found this book really tough to rate. On the one hand there's so much about it that I loved but on the other hand there's so much that I wished had been executed differently.

<b>It is an interesting dynamic of a YA Contemporary Sci-Fi but for me it fell more into a fantasy category since there was no explanation of the science.</b>

The basic premise was interesting, and yet problematic for me: in the distant future humans (or whatever our race evolved into) have developed a means of time travel where you can send someone's consciousness back into the past to a host. The catch is that they are only able to interact with their host while the host is dreaming and in the REM state. I'm not sure what happens to that consciousness during other times - it just wasn't explained. Nor was it explained how they separated the body from the consciousness.

The main characters are Babe, the girl of our time, and Zat, the boy from the future. Babe has never lived in one place for very long - with her father being a golf pro they travel around the country and live wherever her father can find work. At the beginning of the book they are moving to Sugar Dunes, Florida and we follow Babe and her blog through the summer.

<b>I did like the different narratives in the story - the medium of Babe's blog and it's comments were fun to read and it was nice to have a POV from both Babe and Zat.</b>

I enjoyed the flow of the writing and the juxtaposition of the descriptiveness and then the very teenage narration when it came to Babe.

<blockquote><b>
It’s that special peaceful time just before sunset, when day and night reach equilibrium and the world stops to exhale. I’m never up early enough to know if the world inhales before sunrise.
</b></blockquote>

<b>I also really liked the diversity in this book. There was a lot of good representation here with regards to culture, wealth, sexuality and even hobbies and sports.</b> It was great to see.

However there were also some pretty glaring issues that kept me from giving this book a higher rating.

I felt like all the characters other than Babe were underdeveloped and too stereotypical. The plot meandered and seemed to frequently become a bit lost - in short it's a very light plot and I'm not sure that the cookie cutter characters and the light plot worked for me but I did like the relationships that developed and the underlying themes.

Unfortunately I did have a HUGE issue with the way sexual harassment was presented in this book.

Babe is working at the tennis shop and is harassed by the 'big shot' of the country club - the richest king of the hill with the biggest yacht sailing in to their Summer port. It begins with this guy giving Babe '<i>the eye</i>' upon his first meeting her, then progresses to him starting to touch her - seemingly innocuously at first but then rubbing her back and finally culminating in him accusing her of being a seductress, a temptress and kissing her.

In the beginning Babe is worried about herself and her job:

<blockquote><b>
No way was I going to let Mr. Buell come between me and my job, as much as I’m sure he would have enjoyed a me-against-him scenario. It was nothing more than a game to him, but for me it wrecked my entire day.
</b></blockquote>

But it soon progresses to her becoming worried about her parents:

<blockquote><b>
“Your daddy’s the new golf pro, isn’t he? Pat Fremont?”

“Yes, he is.” I heard the threatening subtext of his question and my stomach sunk like a diving sub.

“I ran into him the other day. He’s a real nice fella, by golly. Your mama too, pretty lady. I can see where you get your good looks.”

Here was the threat. He didn’t have to say it—put up or shut up.
</b></blockquote>

Babe tries to justify 'putting up' with the harassment to herself - she only has to avoid the man for one summer and then she would be done with him forever and she refuses to put her parent' future in jeopardy.

But this is a YA book, and while it may be commendable that Babe wanted to protect her parents and later her friend, I just think that a bigger deal should have been made of this and she should have at least TOLD people (like her parents) that it was happening or that more could have been done about it in the book. He's threatened her hoping that it will keep her quiet, and it did! It's sending the wrong message to young readers. It is never Okay to be harassed and I just didn't like how this played out in this book.

Even with these issues there was something about the book that stayed with me - something that kept me wondering and kept prompting me to pick up the book to finish it to try to find the answers to my questions.

<b>The writing is really good and Babe's narrative and her Blog were especially engaging and had the science been more defined and the world building been a little better this could have been a great book.</b>

Unfortunately, this book just really didn't work for me. The craziest part about it all is that I liked hearing about Babe's (mc) life, but the plot of the boy visiting her in her dreams led absolutely NOWHERE and the idea of having chapters from her blog, complete with comments by various other accounts, were interesting, but too cringey. I felt no attachment to the characters and friendships were formed far too quickly and conveniently; the mean girl wasn't mean, and the gay character was was only outed at 88% - possibly only to make the mc feel better about herself & her v strange relationship? However, I'm not part of that minority so can't comment on the representation.

Overall, this book had potential, and some bits worked - but some really, really didn't.

//Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing my with a copy of this in exchange for an honest review//

I read "Dream Me" by Kathryn Berla for the "read a book with a person on the cover" part of the booktubathon last week, and I loved it!

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me access to "Dream Me". It was a really cute story with an unexpected twist.

Teen drinking as well as drunk/abusive parents play a role in "Dream Me" so if you're sensitive to that I'd suggest maybe not reading it. The abuse is never shown, just alluded to.

"Dream Me" is a contemporary read with a slight sci-fi twist that tells the story of Babe, a teenage girl who experiences dreams of a boy, Zat. She doesn't understand these dreams until part way through the novel.

"Dream Me" is written in both first and third person. I like reading books told in first person cause I feel I can connect to the character and what's happening more. Also we see articles from Babe's blog. These are significant to the story because it helps her cope with what's happening to her, both in her dreams with Zat, and in reality with real people. Zat's parts are written in third person, which worked well as he is from the future and none of us have experienced that and we don't know what will happen. This is just the authors take on it for this story.

There's a strong friendship element to "Dream Me" as well the romance. Babe has never really had any friends before apart from her ex boyfriend, who's in California. She gets to know and befriends, Mai a girl that works in her parents Korean food store, a rich boy with secrets of his own, LeGrand, as well as well as other characters that hang out where she works. I do however feel that the romance is a little insta-lovey though, so if that's not your thing, I wouldn't recommend this! The friendship element is perhaps stronger than the romance, however.

4 Stars!

Spoilers Below...

The main character is Babe. She's just moved to Florida from California with her parents. The town Babe's family has moved to has a rich and a poor side. Babe lives on the poor side.

"I had to live on a street named after a fish?"

shows how Babe is shocked about the name of her street. This also shows that she's not afraid to think anything.

Babe experiences weird dreams when she's in Florida. These dreams feature a guy called Zat. He's from the future, when earth is deemed unliveable. He's just about to move to a new planet when he becomes a part of Babe's dreams.

The contemporary side of this story is that Babe is a lover of tennis. She meets new friends when she's playing at the court. As well as Legrand's drunken dad who openly flirts with her. This is where the drunken parent comes in. As I said above, he doesn't abuse Babe. She thinks he could possibly abuse her, though.

I immediately liked and felt a connection to Babe's character. She's a spunky, fun loving girl who just wants an easy life.

"My Mom calls me Baby. Waaah!"

shows that Babe has a personality. Some main characters don't, I feel, which ultimately lets the book down, but Babe's is established within the first chapter of the story.

In Zat's first chapter we understand that the earth, in his futuristic time, is coming to an end. The main reason Zat becomes a part of Babe's Dreams is so that he can live on as in his time the earths population is seriously dwindling.

"Others forged ahead with the hope of discovering a new world. A new Earth, the way it once was".

I feel that if any character was a little underdeveloped it was Zat's character. He's meant to be from far into the future but you wouldn't know.

"His hands grow thick and rough. They curl around mine like roots of an ancient tree. His skin turns the color of amber. His nails morph into talons"

Is literally the only thing that stood out to me and made Zat different to a regular human being living in the 21st century. Without that description, Zat could just be a regular male character. It would have been nice if he'd had some powers or something that made him stand out other than this little description.

I felt that these two different time lines of Babe and Zat were established well at the beginning and I never felt confused about who I was reading about.

Babe doubted her ability to believe while Zat doubted his ability to be real. I don't want to spoil anything else but I really enjoyed "Dream Me". I think it's worth the read if you like love stories, strong friendships or characters with a goal to accomplish.

What did I like about "Dream Me"?
I liked the use of first person as I said above.

I liked how all of the real characters grew to accept each other, even though they were all different.

I liked how Mai and Babe supported each other throughout. There was never any backstabbing between them.

I liked how we got to see articles from Babe's blog, and how we got to see her responses to comments on it. It brought a different take on the story.

What didn't I like about "Dream Me"?

I didn't like how Zat didn't really seem different to any other character in the book. I felt he should have at least had something different.

I wish Zat had been focused on a little more. I get that the story is more about Babe but Zat plays an important role still. If he'd been from the 21st century the amount of detail we got would have been fine. I wanted more though, because he was from the future.

I didn't like how short the story was. I felt it wrapped up to soon and that more could have happened to the characters.

I didn't like the ending. I found it confusing.

I'm giving "Dream Me" 4 Stars because although I loved the story as a whole there were a couple of things that didn't quite make sense for me. One of those being the ending, which I don't want to spoil.

Stand by for my next review coming in a few minutes...

I really like Dystopian theme books however I felt that this one really fell flat and it was disappointing. I found the description of the book to be more captivating than what actually lurked between the pages.

I loved the dual narrative of this book and how it providd insight into a future and past lives. It really fit into the time frame and I recommend this book to those you love romance and Young Adult stories!

Set in Florida! The best plan, if you can’t live where you’re from, is to read books that are about places you’re from. This is based in Florida, panhandle to be exact, but Florida is Florida and I loved reading about the smell of the beach, boiled peanuts (ACK! Now I’m craving boiled peanuts!), and of all things fire ants! They’re a bit of a shock if you’ve never met one before.

So the setting was obviously up my alley and a nice surprise but the entire story was fun. It is Science Fiction but compared to some other books I’ve read if sci fi turns you off I would say this is a really light sci fi. The premise is totally sci fi but it’s a love story. It reminds me of something like the movie The Lakehouse, but young adult. And if you haven’t seen The Lakehouse, go now, do it!

Many times when stories are written with multiple character point of views, I wind up wanting to read one over the other. This wasn’t the case with Dream Me. I felt that I wanted to know as much as I could about the characters, from every point of view. I loved when Zat was speaking, although he does not give much information about what is happening, there is enough to get a feeling for what he is going through but I also loved when Babe was speaking. The narration comes mostly from Babe, some through posts on her blog which adds another mixture to the story, but the perspectives are unique and fun.

I do think I liked the blog posts the most. And the comments! I want to know more about DreamMe too. Who is this person!? What threw me was that at 95% I was starting to seriously wonder if this was going to have a cliff hanger ending. It doesn’t but it didn’t feel completely tidied up. The ending was fabulous but I was left with a few more questions than answers.

I think with a book like this though, especially romance, the reader tends to be happy even with details left out. I am completely satisfied with the outcome that Kathryn Berla gave her readers. Questions, yes many but I closed this book with satisfaction! The world building would have been wonderful and I would have loved to know more about Zat’s world and what he was going through, but what the reader does know is good.

Also, there are some side characters and some differences that really made this stand out. First, I loved that this is a young adult but the parents are fully in the picture! And that the side characters are almost always around. Mai is spunky and seems like a great side kick and LeBrand wound up being a bit of a surprise. Sadly, the downside is that I wound up knowing more about these characters than we find out about Zat, even though a portion of the book was done through his pov.

What I absolutely did not like was that Babe fell in love instantly. I absolutely hate insta-love. I get insta infatuation and maybe that is how it started but Babe was saying some pretty heavy stuff for just having met this boy and in a dream no less. So, that was strange for me. I get her being curious but she started wanting to go to sleep just to see Zat pretty quickly. Again, like the sci fi underdevelopment, you just have to kind of go with it to see how it all works out. I enjoyed it. It’s not so poppy that you feel like you’re reading bubblegum, and it has a bit more premise than your average romance but I think a little bit more could have been done to develop their relationship.

Overall it was a fun read that I really enjoyed. I just want to know more about Zat! I would love a story from his perspective and world. It’s so brilliant!

I would first like to thank the author and publisher for letting me get a copy off of netgalley.

Second, I just want to say this was beautifully written. I absolutely loved this book! Every word, every scene, every character was written with magic coursing through the pages. I honestly could not put this book down until the very last page. From the very first page to the last, I was drawn in and lost in the story.

10/10 recommend this to everyone!

Starting with the positive I have to say, I absolutely love the cover. It’s really eye catching ans beautiful. Now, what about the story? It’s some kind of love story and I had high hopes that I would love it just as much as the cover. Sadly, I did not. Don’t get me wrong. There was nothing wrong with the writing. But I just couldn’t connect with the characters. I wanted to know more about this dream world, but it wasn’t mentioned more than in her dreams and not especially colorful. Even though the novel couldn’t pull me in like I wanted to, I’m happy I read the book and I will try another book from the other. I think it was just me and the book not clicking. I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thanks to NetGalley and Amberjack Publishing!

Time travel and the end of the world. That is what some teenage boy named Zat lives with far into the future. With his world ending, he has three options, stay where he is and die, travel to a new planet to live on or travel back in time and live in the dreams of someone from them past, hoping to someday become corporeal. He decides to travel back in time. His unwitting host is Babe, an average teenage girl who loves tennis and is sick of moving around for her Dad's job. She has her own set of problems with creepy men at her work and trying to make friends in her new town, all the while have these crazy dreams of a very attractive boy.

Dream Me was severely all around underdeveloped. The plot, the characters, everything. It all was subpar and uninteresting. Lets start with the main characters... you just don't care about them. They are both fairly one dimensional and don't change much or develop throughout the book. Plot wise, this book did not do a good job. I could see the author was clearly undecided if the novel should be a sci-fi, a romance, a high school age drama, a summer vacation story or a story on money and the abuse of power. Because of this, the story had no solid direction or purpose. It was boring and literally almost nothing happened. Boring through and through. I give Dream Me the rating of TWO OUT OF FIVE STARS!

A really nice read, very simple and flowed well. I could have done with more hints of characterisation and maybe some more times to rest, but overall I did enjoy the story! I'm not always a sucker for romance, but this was charming in a nice way. Sometimes, yes, cheesy and a bit oh no, romance again, but the concept was well done.

Intriguing premise with beautiful prose and a confusing ending

The only way to describe this book is dream-like. The prose is evocative of that perfect summer’s day on the beach, where everything is so real and so surreal at the same time. It is easy to get swept away in this story, though the feeling doesn’t last past the end of the book.

The premise is interesting: at the end of the world, Earthlings are leaving in hope of finding a new planet but some choose to go back in time, not physically but mentally. Zat chooses to inhabit Babe’s dreams and they fall in love.

The characters were interesting and varied, especially the supporting cast. I really liked LeGrand and Alonso and felt they both deserved a little more page time – I want to know if this summer changed their lives or if it was an idyllic blip they would both leave behind.

For me, the main romantic plot was a bit of a letdown as it started with insta-love and ended in – well, I don’t really get how it ended. Dreams are confusing and by the end, I wasn’t exactly sure what was real and what wasn’t. I was left vaguely unsatisfied and still can’t work out why. I much preferred the subplot of Babe making friends at the Country Club.

The other issue I had with this book (and it’s a minor one but bear with me) is Babe's attitude to the rich kids, especially Mattie Lynn. She assumes they’re all spoiled and shallow, and though LeGrand dispels those stereotypes for himself, Mattie Lynn doesn’t get enough time on the page to do the same. I think we are supposed to infer there is more to her than meets the eye, but Babe’s disparaging point of view does not help matters at all. It comes off very ‘pretty + rich = mean’ which is a tired old path by now.

I wanted to love this book, but I only loved the writing, not the whole.

I really don't know what to say about this one. The plot sounded interesting but the execution of it just didn't work out for me. The world building seemed under-developed and the characters were just kinda meh. I was so excited to get this one. The insta-love didn't help this issue at all. When the side-MC decided to travel back into the past to live in the dreams of the main-MC he was already in love with her. ugh. I just have no words for how much this one didn't work out for me.

This is a young adult sci-fi novel, but it reads more like a summery contemporary. The narrative is mostly from the point of view of the main female character named Babe. Her dad is a golf pro who moves around a lot as he gets jobs at various country clubs around the US. We meet Babe at the beginning of the summer before she starts her senior year in high school. The family just moved to Sugar Dunes, Florida and Babe is hoping she'll be able to finish high school without any more moving.

At the same time another point of view is introduced. This one is that of the main male lead Zat who lives in the distant future. In Zat's time, the sun is dying, the earth is a desolate place and humans (or what is left of them) are desperately searching for ways to escape the planet. Most people choose to seek shelter on distant planets. But Zat decides to go with a more unconventional and barely tested way to preserve his existence. He "re-locates" into the distant past (Babe's present) and exists only in her dreams.

I have to admit this premise is really interesting and not anything I've seen before. I was fascinated by the concept of a dream partner. I ended up really enjoying this book. Not so much for its sci-fi themes but rather I liked following Babe's real life drama of making friends and getting adjusted to her life in the new place. Her friendship with Mai and Alonso was very well crafted. However, her friendship with LeGrand was a bit unexpected, and almost accidental. I wish there was more of a story to their becoming friends. In addition, the character of Mattie Lynn was not developed at all. It felt as though the author was thinking of going in one direction but then completely abandoned the idea, so there was no real point of Mattie Lynn's presence in the narrative. Zat's character and the future he came from could also be a bit better fleshed out.

Notwithstanding these multiple weaknesses, the novel overall was entertaining. I had fun reading it and was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars purely for the enjoyment factor.

Babe is always the new girl in town. Always. So, when her family moves to Florida one summer, she doesn’t expect much, just a regular life working for the local country club and its upper-class members. But she makes friends and starts to imagine a life there. Then the headaches start, terrible, blinding ones that seem to be caused by the dreams she has every single night.

Zat is a dreamer from a far distant future where people no longer dream and Earth is dying. In his dreams, he sees red-haired Babe and longs to experience the life she embraces. Instead of leaving Earth with his family, he chooses to travel back in time and live in Babe’s dreams, but he never imagines those dreams will cause her so much pain. While Babe clings to their dream life together, Zat tries to pull away so he no longer hurts her. Soon they must make a choice between dreams and reality.

I’ve read some great books lately, and Dream Me is one of them. The whole premise is unique, since Zat only exists in Babe’s dreams, but the characters are so vivid they feel like I know them personally. Zat’s bleak existence made me feel sorry for him, and I could relate to Babe’s tough exterior, caused by her challenging life. These characters are deep and compelling, and the novel blends YA with fantasy seamlessly, with an added does of mystery—what is Zat hiding? Will they find a solution? Even the setting—the steamy Florida coast—lives and breathes on the page. If you love YA, fantasy, romance, or sci-fi, you should read this!

Constantly moving around, outsider, with exceptional dry wit, Babe, ends up in Florida. There she "meets" Zat from a future doomed Earth, where no one dreams, and has traveled back into her dreams. Great premise, since I love time travel & have always been intrigued by dreams.

We have 2 POVs and Babe's blog diary, which I think is quite interesting & the interchanging between them is a steady flow. Clever of the author to show us Zat's world, before the time traveling, as to emphasize the antithesis of the protagonists situations, making it more powerful.

Babe & Zat were both instantly lovable. Likeable supporting characters even though some attitudes were a bit too cliche & some personality traits came out of nowhere & weren't really necessary.

Bittersweet, compelling, full of the weird quirks you can only acquire from time travel, plus the mystery of our subconscious, this could of been a more than 5 star book. But what unfortunately lessened the book was the ending. The revelation & conclusion it brought was rushed, too abrupt & maybe needed a bit more of an explanation.

Babe is always moving. The story starts when she’s 17 and is moving to Florida. Her father is a pro golfer and got a job in a country club. She also works there in the Tennis shop.
Everything is going ok despite being far from her boyfriend until she starts having vivid dreams that leaves her with terrible headaches.

The writing style was ok, but the plot was super messy. It was like the two storylines had no relation to each other even though they concerned the same character. There was the dream plot and the reality plot…

We had no depth in the dream world… We only knew about it from her blog updates and it was always brushed over. We didn’t get to see how they fell for each other, how they connected and it made me not care. At all. I was mostly bored through it all and the only storyline I was interested in was resolved in a way that infuriated me…...