“Survivor's guilt was the price you paid for living, and sometimes the cost was too high.”

A Multitude of Dreams was captivating from the first chapter! This story follows a deadly plague, and two people who are very different but are able to come together and deal with this. This book has Jewish representation as well!

While overall this was a fine read, it was a bit young for me as I find myself reading less YA, or being more picky with which stories I choose to consume. The pacing was as expected, but sometimes I found things a bit too convenient. I almost wish we had a bit more of this book because the world as so cool! One of the strongest points of this book was the writing, as Rutherford’s words flow around the page as you’re taken along. This book started off slow, but by the end, the tension was so high and the action kept me on the edge of my seat! At it’s core, this is a story about surviving and this theme rang true for me as I read.

This is a great read if you enjoy a darker YA fantasy mixed with romance and friendship! Thank you to Netgalley and Mara Rutherford for this arc, as I got a bookmark with a download link at Apollycon.

I heard such great reviews for this fantasy, but unfortunately it fell a bit flat for me. It started off well, but ultimately it was the slow pace that kept me from truly loving it

Mara Rutherford has a talent for writing spellbinding books that suck you in with their atmosphere. I loved the darker aspects of this, the love interest and their relationship is my favorite kind, and I was thinking about it long after I finished!

A Multitude of Dreams by Mara Rutherford is a retelling of Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" that has a gorgeous cover! Although it was a good read it just was missing a few things for me. It was a bit slow at first and the werid inputs of the Jewish religion set me off a bit when religion didn't play a huge role. The beginning of the book has "things are not always as it seems and there are monsters" written on it and it just took a bit longer for me to get into. However it was a good YA book and look forward to other books she publishes. Thanks NetGalley for the eARC!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

This was great I loved this story and I loved these characters. This was a fun adventure and this is an auto buy author for me. It’s 100% worth the read.

An Edgar Allen Poe retelling. If you like your atmosphere a little dark and gothic this is the book for you!

I can’t speak to the Poe retelling.
I was into the plot as the initial premise is interesting, and I wanted to know about Imogen and Nico. But then it lost me with the introduction of vampires 2/3 of the way in. Overall it wasn’t super gripping, and honestly the characters all get a little confusing and blend together, without much happening. I received an advance review copy for free via Netgalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and author for the copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I tried really hard to get into this book but I just could not. It ended up in my do not finish pile which is sad because the synopsis was decent. I will try again one day

I would have bought this book if I hadn’t received an e-arc for my honest review. I loved this book just off the cover, but the story made it even better! I will definitely be recommending this to my students who want a change from just romance or realistic fiction.

A Multitude of Dreams is supposed to be a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of Red Death which is definitely appealing! But it's set in some pseudo-fantasy (or maybe speculative alternate history) unnamed medieval world/castle/manor as one single bastion against a deadly plague that is now over 4 years later but, there's a mad king keeping everyone in!

The MC is a Jewish girl who was taken from her guarded Jewish area to stand in for a dead princess so aforementioned mad king didn't know she was dead, BUT... there are no other apparent religions or even religious ceremonies/items/literally anything in this world related to any other religion. So there's this historical oppression of Jews (valid and real) that draws on knowledge of the real world and real life history to be applied to a fake castle/semi-fantasy world but with no indication of who is doing oppression or why except "everyone who is not Jewish is oppressive for reasons we'll just leave you to figure out but do not exist in context." (Note: I would have this same exact issue if the MC was any other religion because one single real world religion in a fake fictional world makes zero sense in context; it is Very Weird to have one real world aspect and its historical cultural stressors be present in this non-real world with everything else stripped out).

Also there are vampires for some reason who exhibit no other vampiristic traits other than "we are drinking the blood of people immune from the plague" and "you can't kill us with gut sword" and "you have to invite us in probably."

It's kind of a mess, and I never got a sense of who anyone really was, especially the guy who was introduced as the first love interest before the second one came around -- a victim of 'too many named characters in a very small setting with very little substance amongst any of them,' which is a shame. The concept is good (except the vampires and I am a very big vampire liker) on its head and so much just falls short that I kept reading chapter after chapter in hope that some of my gripes would be ironed out.

Beautiful cover though!

Thank you to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for the eARC in exchange for honest review.

A Poe retelling/story of Jewish oppression during the black plague?
Kind of?
We have our fake princess Seraphina, who is secretly Jewish and an imposter, and her longing desire to leave the boarded up castle her and her fake family have been trapped in. And then theres Nico, a grave robber/ the hero of the story?
To be honest I'm not sure about this one. I did give it four stars because I did enjoy reading it, but it's not one I would reread. I loved the set up of the plague and the survivors, but I don't understand this world. How is this world surviving when its ruler is locked away going mad in a castle? Do the remaining survivors just do whatever they want, whenever they want? It's not like any of the politicians can make any credible decisions. Part of the backstory is marry Seraphina off to a far away Prince, but why? There is no political gain to that at this point and I don't think lands and borders make much of a difference in a world where half the population has died from the plague.
I was very shocked by the sudden appearance of vampires, but I did really like the way it fit into the story and how the plague affected people differently and how these changes shaped their lives.
For a story that takes place 90% inside a castle, I did think the atmosphere and limited world building was really well done, and although The Poison Season is still my favorite of Rutherfords books, I do think this was a very fun YA read.

While I enjoyed A Multitude of Dreams, I thought it wasn't as good as The Poison Season. I think that is because this novel just moved slowly. Things truly started happening at the halfway point.
I liked the idea of an illness creating vampires. I enjoyed the several comparisons with the rich and those that leach off people in real-world pandemics. Coming after COVID it was moving. And of course, I loved the illness being called the Red Death. I thought including that she was Jewish in a fantasy world weird, but the author was using it as a teachable moment and allowed her cultural heritage to shine through.
The characters have some development but there isn't a huge arc for the major or minor characters. The ending is a little too on the nose and doesn't match the tone of the rest of the book. But overall, I enjoyed this inventive vampire tale.

What a fun and surprising story! I entered this book not knowing anything about it and was pleasantly surprised to find it is loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. It is dripping with mystery and is both opulent and darkly gothic, and I enjoyed every minute reading this book.

This was a very spooky YA fantasy novel! I would definitely recommend to anyone who thinks it sounds good!

I received an e-ARC from the publisher

A plague is sweeping across the land and the aristocracy has sequestered themselves in the castle to protect themselves. After years of isolation, Princess Imogen is holding onto her own secret and is desperate to leave the castle, no matter what she may find outside the walls. Meanwhile Nico has survived the plague and enters the castle in search of survivors. Their first impressions of each other are not as they seem but they work together to untangle the machinations at hand. At times it was a bit predictable and there were a lot of different elements thrown in together, but the overall premise was interesting. Fans of zombie/vampire novels with a historical element will like this one.

I always enjoy reading novels that are retellings or reimaginings of classic pieces, so I was excited to see the connection to “The Masque of the Red Death.” I enjoyed the novel, but I did feel like there were slow parts of the plot in the first half that would unfortunately cause some of my student readers to give up on the book. I did start to see the pieces coming together before they were revealed, and while I know that sometimes happens because of my wide experiences as a reader and YA readers don’t necessarily have the same experience, in this case, I think they would see many of those moments coming and would want those conflicts or plot twists handled more quickly than they are. I do hope that the final version includes some kind of distinction for which POV you’ll see at the beginning of each chapter. I figured it out and switched back and forth in my head, but chapter labels would’ve made those transitions more fluid for me. Overall, interesting story concept with a good little background romance!

This was my first Mara Rutherford book though I have seen here books around and have been interested in them.

This book was so magically written I could picture everything as a read it. The words flowed beautifully even when the story itself was kind of tragic.

I was a little confused by this book. It felt like a realistic book set in an older time. With the reborn though it also felt magical. So wasn't sure about some things, it confused me a little. Like the religious aspect with the Jews, or some of the stuff going on with the plague. I guess that would be only downfall. Would be some more background on the world would have been nice.

Thank you to Netgalley for this copy.

Sigh. I really enjoyed this book and yet it falls so short of what it could've been.

It all comes down to there being too many elements and not enough book and worldbuilding. With the amount of elements that are introduced this book should've been for adults, and significantly longer.

3.5 rounded up.