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.

Sadly, this one didn't work well for me. I wished the fantasy would have been introduced sooner and the format of the title was kind of off. The diary thing just didn't work very well for this story if you ask me. The romance was kind of badly done as well and just didn't flow like most do. The story could be amazing but it needs some work. It was over the top with school drama but underwhelming with the whole Fae thing. I love stories about the courts but this one just didn't shine at all.

Unintentionally written like a diary and has way too much drama filler content. It's marketed as low fantasy but the main character doesn't find out about magic until 40% into the book. The pacing in the romance was awkward & unrealistic, and overall this book was very boring & tedious to read.

Read my full review on my Goodreads!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3120943681

I'm confused on the release date for In Restless Dreams. Netgalley says 2020 but Goodreads says 2016. It would have been a really good paranormal story in 2016 but there are much better Fae stories out there now. If you are looking more for dramatics, then I think you would love this book. If you like Fae stories I would even recommend it. It just didn't work well for me. 💖

A shortened version of this review will be posted on my Goodreads page (https://www.goodreads.com/somethingofthebook by January 13, 2020.

While In Restless Dreams is an intriguing take on the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of Fairy, it spends most of its time in never resolved high school drama/bullying and never quite connected for me.
Rating: 2 Stars

I went into In Restless Dreams expecting the kind of story I loved: modern world with fairies, spunky main character, and some angsty romance. What I got was over half a book of bullying and abuse in a high school setting, two dimensional characters, and a flat romance.

I do want to put a disclaimer on this review: I think if I had read this book when I was 16, I would have loved it. After over 20 years of reading fantasy and just living my life in general, I have a very different lens that I read books through. I try to not let this get in the way of reading/reviewing YA novels, but sometimes it cannot be helped.

Let’s start with the good first: the idea of the Phantasmer was unique and I liked the twists to the typical Seelie and Unseelie Courts I’ve read in the past. The pace was good and I actually read the novel in one night. While I was disappointed with such a lack of Fairy in the first half of the book, I was still compelled to keep reading. And while I was often upset by the bullying and abuse that is traded between the main character, Sylvia, and the students at her new prep school, I feel it was a pretty good representation of the terrible environments of high schools these days.

The story starts with the suicide attempt of Sylvia’s mother. Her very, very rich father swoops in and kindly helps his ex-wife get into a treatment facility while also taking on his kids full time and basically setting them up in his very, very rich life. That’s all fine and good, except there is no real exploration of her mother. If you are going to use something as serious as a suicide attempt, there better damn well be a reason beyond a convenient reason to move a plot forward. Suicide can be a very trigger thing of so many people these days, and to see it treated as a way for Sylvia and her brother to suddenly have a rich life just feels so, so wrong.

I never felt I got any depth of character with anyone in the story. Sylvia likes to play all the sports in the world and that’s about all I know about her. The high school students she encounters all feel like they were there because it's what's expected: a mean girl, a mean boy who flirts and abuses in turn, the nice one who for some reason stands up for the the mean girl, etc. The two fairy boys that basically fight over and then for Sylvia have very little to them. I wanted to be drawn into a swoony love triangle, but it just wasn’t there for me.

At the end of the day, I think my disappointment in this one was a difference of expectations. If I had known the main character was 16 years old, I wouldn’t have requested it. I also expected a lot more Fairy in the story, and much less of the high school drama. I expected more exploration of Fairy and Sylvia’s Phantasmer powers. In Restless Dreams is a fast read with some interesting twists on Fairy, but it just never worked for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to review this book.

I am glad this is the first in a series! I feel like there is so much to cover, and we barely scratched the surface of it! Sylvia's life is greatly changed when her mother attempts suicide, forcing the family to move to NYC so her dad can be the primary parent while her mom is in therapy. Strange things begin happening almost as soon as Sylvia gets to the city, and the introduction of 2 strangers at a party sets her life on a whole new course, one in which she could have never imagined.

I really liked this book. I would have loved more background on her mom, because it almost feels like she is tied to what happens to Sylvia in some way. Or maybe that is just me wanted more depth and layers to the story. I like the play on good and evil, and how what may seem as good at first is not quite as good as you thought up close. I would have loved to see Sylvia take more ownership of herself and her story, but I think that will come in the next one!