Member Review

After a fall down the stairs, Gerry is bedridden. Luckily, he is rich enough for an assistant and a nurse to take care of him. He is a famous author who wrote a bestseller, Dream Girl. He is hopped up on strong painkillers. When the heroine of his book, Aubrey, begins to phone him, Gerry thinks the drugs are making him hallucinate. Though his mother did just die of dementia and hallucinated too. Or could it be someone real from his past trying to Gaslight him?

Dream Girl is being marketed as horror, which it is not. It reads more like a psychological thriller. However, the pacing is s-l-o-w. While I understand that the confusion evident in some of the chapters was meant to replicate the foggy, confused state of Gerry’s mind, it was confusing to decipher. Plus, Gerry is a non-woke misogynist who is just plain unpleasant to spend time with. Think of four hours spent with Harvey Weinstein while he goes on and on about how his victims enjoyed being sexually molested.

For those reasons, Dream Girl receives 3 stars from me.

Thanks to Faber & Faber Ltd. and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.