The Last Dreamwalker by Rita Woods was an interesting read that I enjoyed. I was happy to receive the audiobook thanks to NetGalley and Macmillian Audio since there were some slower parts to the plot in the middle. I enjoyed the multiple timelines and POVs which added depth and understanding of the plot and characters.

Overall, an enjoyable read that I would recommend to others

This was a really wonderful book - I returned for a second read, and I loved it even more the second time. This was dark and creepy, and it kept my attention the entire time. Following Layla's mother's death, she has to deal with the trauma that their relationshop wrought. She inherited a piece of land on the Gullah-Geechee island... as well as the gift of dreamwalking. She gains memories of her mother and the land.. as well as the attention of a second dreamwalker who threatens Layla's safety.

The reader learns about Dreamalking along with Layla. Great world building.

I was given a NetGalley widget for this one a year ago and I just got around to reading it and dangit it was so good. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have consumed this wildly relevant fictional tale, which felt not at all fictional, more like historical fiction, due to the times. The cover initially was what drew me in, but I'm so thankful to have stuck with it because the outcome was magical. I always love listening to audiobooks and when they sweep me off my feet, I'm just utterly captivated! I always really enjoy multi-cultural thrillers, for I embark on a journey through a land unknown to me, while still getting spooked.

THE LAST DREAMWALKER tells the story of two women, separated by nearly two centuries yet inextricably linked to the Gullah Geechee Islands off the coast of South Carolina and their connection to a mysterious and extraordinary gift passed from generation to generation.

Layla's mother has died and Layla inherited part of the island that was kept from her. She comes from a long line of Dreamwalkers, for many years. I thought this was such a unique story, with a gripping storyline that kept me intrigued.

I listened to the audiobook copy for review, and thought it was a good choice for narrator.

*many thanks to Macmillan Audio and netgalley for the gifted copy for review

Layla's mother passes away and she is left with an unexpected inheritance ( half of an island ) that was kept from her, her whole life. Her family comes from a long line of dreamwalkers a gift the third daughter Receives, dating way back hundreds of years ago.

Once she gets to Scotia Island she meets her cousin Charlotte who owns the other half of the island. Layla recalls seeing Charlotte in her dreams - Charlotte does not like Layla and eventually leads to Layla trying to find out more about her family’s past and trying to correct it.

This was more of a thriller than I was expecting, the book was slower paced and I felt like the ending left me questioning people on a good vs evil scale. I would recommend this book and I look forward to more books by this author. I will definitely be adding this book to different genre readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the ARC.

The concept here is both interesting and complex. It centers on a family, brought to the US from Africa during the slave trade, with a line of dreamwalkers. These are third daughters of third daughters.

There is culture and history as well as family secrets, drama, revenge, magical realism, and fantasy. The pacing is quite slow with a long buildup of the back story.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the gifted audiobook!

Pub Date: 9/20/22 Available Now!

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Last Dreamwalker by Rita Woods

Layla is dealing with the sudden lost of her mother. Who she had a complicated relationship before she died. Layla goes out and reconnects with family that she was forbidden to see when her mother was alive. She learns a lot about herself. She discovers that each third generation becomes a dreamwalker. Someone who can see into other people's dreams. Layla has this ability to hear other people's dream. In her discovery of family she also finds out she inherits a piece of land on an island.

Layla's life changes fast and she is now dealing with hearing other people's dream this cause some distress for her. She can manipulate the dreams of others as well. The trauma is laid bare from the family and as Layla learns about her ability it becomes clear that the power she wields is everything that needs to be to save herself and her family.

This is a really creepy moving story that pulls you in and wraps you into the family as the story unfolds you see the family as it is. Some of the people in the story are just not nice at all they are horrible people. I cannot even imagine dealing with seeing everyone else's dream when my own dreams at times haunt me.

Nedra Marie Taylor narrated this book and did a great job with each character. This was solid four star read for me. I recommend this book to anyone who likes characters with magical abilities this book will be for you.

Thanks you to NetGalley and McMillan Audio for a free audio copy of The Last Dreamwalker for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

The first thing that drew me in was the cover, the design is absolutely stunning. I honestly had little knowledge of what the book was about. I wanted to go into this one fairly blind, and I’m glad I did! This is an urban fantasy novel set in South Carolina. The main premise is that the main character is a dream walker - She has the ability to enter someone’s dream. More is discovered and revealed, not only about this gift & it’s origin, but also the characters heritage, as the novel goes on. It deals with complicated familial relationships and how sometimes people have a difficult time listening / understanding each other. It’s definitely a book that leaves you wanting more. The pace of the novel was near perfect as it didn’t drag but wasn’t too fast to the point of hard to keep track. I highly recommend this book! For me personally it’s a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

The Last Dreamwalker by Rita Woods was a phenomenal read that incorporated the best elements of the fantasy, coming-of-age, and family drama genres.

Layla Hurley has just lost her mother. In the wake of her passing, Layla reconnects with her mother's estranged sisters. She quickly learns that her mother was hiding a lot of secrets. She is now a half owner of a mysterious Gullah-Geechee island off of the coast of South Carolina and the nightmares that have plagued her for her entire life have a deeper meaning. She is a Dreamwalker. She is not only able to enter the dreams of others, but she can manipulate them. As more and more secrets are revealed, she is drawn into an old feud.

The Last Dreamwalker is available now. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Layla’s mother has recently passed away. They had a tumultuous relationship at best. So, when she discovers several secrets her mother kept hidden, Layla decides to learn more and do what her mother refused to do.

I so enjoyed the characters, especially the aunts. But, Layla is no slouch. She gets tougher and tougher as the novel moves along. I also loved reading about the Gulah-Geechee culture. Talk about a novel full of just about everything imaginable…this one has it all!

Now, to be honest…this book is out there…but is it really?!? I mean, dreams are weird. I am definitely still thinking about this. I am not a huge dreamer, but when I do dream…it is different and sometimes I visit with a few of my relatives, past and present. And this is pretty much what Layla encounters in her dreams. Except sometimes hers get violent and she ends up with bruises.

The narrator, Nedra Marie Taylor, is amazing. She had great voices for each of the characters and really made this story come to life!

Need a novel which will have you thinking…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

I tried, but I just couldn't absorb this. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for it, but I tried to listen a few times and just could not finish the book :(

I absolutely loved this story! The narrator did a great job, and as someone who grew up in the south, many of the Gullah Geechee references were familiar to me. My only complaint was the waves sounds—I appreciated that they were meant to signify when dreamwalking was happening, but for people who listen to audiobooks at faster then 1.0x speed, it just sounds like bizarre fuzzy white noise.

Thank you NetGallery and Macmillan Audio for the complimentary audio book in exchange for an honest review. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy this book. I felt that the characters were thinly defined, the story took too long to get to the “hint” of what the problem to be solved was, and it just didn’t have any legs. Not my cup of tea.

Highly recommend this one!
Layla comes from a line of dreamwalkers but she doesn’t realize this until the gift comes for her after her mother dies. Not only has Layla started dreamwalking but her mother left her an island with so much history of Gullah-Geechee culture, which was a fascinating part of this book. I have been to this area of the world and Woods does a great job at making us feel in this place.
The dreams she enters are not the happy dreams of happy people she seems to enter the nightmares and sometimes she’s not sure if they are her nightmare or someone elses. The history of this family and this place are all intertwined with the dreams and the only thing she can do is try to help.

Narration by Nedra Marie Taylor is excellent she truly brings everyone to life and I like the softness during the dreams.

This is a hard book to review because I don’t want to give away how it all works and what she accomplishes in the dreamworld. All I can say is this is an excellent story that I highly recommend on audio for the great narration.

4 Stars

I received this audiobook from the publisher Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. ARC provided by Macmillan Audio.

After her mother’s unexpected death, Layla Hurley must accept that their relationship was always distant and fraught. In the wake of her passing, Layla reconnects with the maternal side of her family—aunts she has not been allowed to visit or speak to for years, and stories she’s never heard. She travels to South Carolina in search of closure, but discovers much more than she bargained for. While her mother harbored dark and disturbing secrets, there is also talk of her inheritance: a piece of land on the Gullah-Geechee island off the shore is now her own.

But Layla inherits more than land. A long-buried mysterious power, dropped through generations of her Gullah ancestors, awakens. Like many women before her, Layla is a dreamwalker. She can inhabit and manipulate the dreams of others. As she dives into dark memories of her mother and the history of the island, she is desperate to hold onto what is real and untangle it from the looming dread that someone else, someone cloaked in malice, inhabits these dreams too. No gift is without its consequences, and Layla finds herself thrust in the middle of a nightmare against an enemy that could snatch away her family and her life as she knows it.

The Last Dreamwalker is an exploration of family ties. The story shares a peek into the lives of each woman in Layla's lineage, some quick snapshots and others longer explorations. For much of the book, though, I was unclear as to where the story was headed. I wanted much more momentum and to feel a greater anticipation of the climax. I also wanted a more gothic atmosphere, more time on the nearly abandoned island, and more background on the history and culture of the Gullah people. Perhaps the ending was meant to be hopeful, but I found its dark possibilities quietly disturbing. The Last Dreamwalker has enough originality and interesting characters to make it worth the read. The entire book was definitely a fascinating look at personal autonomy, at those who violate the will of others for their own purposes and those who live through that violation.

While I received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for my review (via netgalley), all opinions remain my own.

TW - slavery, racism, violence, mental health

I found this story to be quite compelling. It kept me listening long beyond when I should have turned it off. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Layla and her island. This story also goes back to the viewpoints of Layla's ancestors and you see how the island came to be theirs. The idea of dream-walking is something that I have always been fascinated with and this book just brought the idea to life. It is a new twist on a very old concept. One thing I also loved was the way the family related to each other. Felt like a real family dynamic. We aren't all like the classic TV family, this shows that we can still function, even if we aren't perfect.

As is fitting for a book largely about dreams, I can’t quite seem to pin down this book. Sometimes hauntingly atmospheric, sometimes vaguely confusing, {I}The Last Dreamwalker{/I} flashes back and forth between two generations in a family’s history, set among the islands of the South Carolina coast.

Following her mother’s death, Layla Hurley reunites with her mother’s estranged sisters, who drop the earth-shattering news that she now has an entire island to her name as part of her inheritance: a former slave property she shares with a cousin she has never met. As she travels to the island to learn more, she also comes to understand that the island is not all that she’s inherited — she’s also been given the ability to walk into other people’s dreams and manipulate them, a trait her late mother and cousin both share. While Layla seems determined to uncover all of her family’s old dreamwalking secrets, her cousin seems even more determined to keep her locked out.

The tension and pacing of the narrative was consistently strong, and I think the audiobook format adds a lot. Nedra Marie Taylor did an excellent job in her performance. This was my first book by Rita Woods and I’ll go out on a limb by saying that she’s flying under the radar too much. This wasn’t a perfect read for me (I found myself wanting more out of the conflict, and more explanations in the resolution), but it held plenty of entertainment along the way. It provides descriptively rich writing, and I’m certainly intrigued enough to read future works from her.

Thank you to Rita Woods, NetGalley, and Macmillan Audio for providing an advance copy of this book for an honest review.

I love fantasy and I love historical fiction so The Last Dreamwalker should've been a winner for me, right? Well, should've isn't always right.

This book had the same problem many books have had for me in recent years. The plots/story/pov flip back and forth in time. Some books this works well for but this one I was more invested in the 'historical' fiction part and I don't feel as if it was fleshed out enough. Also, I feel as if this should've been two books to give appropriate time to each story line even if they do connect. The present felt flat and I just expected more I guess.

Thank you to Netgalley to providing me with an arch of this book.

The Last Dreamweaver is a beautifully engaging immersion into another world, woven with culture, mystery, and family secrets. The narration was perfect and fit the story well.

An interesting concept of a book with the idea of walking in dreams. A wonderfully woven narrative spanning generations and character perspectives learning about ancestors and relatives you might take for granted. This book is written in two timelines; in the present: Layla has been estranged from her Mother for years, whose constant vivid dreams has been dismissed for years, but when her mother passes away, she learns the truth about her dreams, and her Mother's family. The 2nd timeline, Gemma, Layla's ancestor who was a slave on a rice plantation in South Carolina, gives a small reflection of slavery, magic and family history. The author wove a vivid tale of family and history set against the backdrop of Gullah Geechee islands in South Carolina, prompting me to now want to book a vacation there as they sounded so peaceful. The story was rich and detailed with character you grew to accept and maybe even love despite their flaws. The concept of entering people's dreams and them having real world consequences was very compelling.

Thanks to Forge and Netgalley as well as the author.,