I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I was disappointed in this to say the least. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a book is labelled sci-fi, but turns out to just have a skeleton of a sci-fi story. This is a literary fiction book with whispers of sci-fi. We spend a majority of the time in the main characters head, reading about her experience. Yes, it is set in a somewhat "big brother" futuristic world where dreams are used to convict someone of a crime before they even do it, but the sci-fi aspects are never fleshed out. The tech that is brought up is never explained. We don't get to understand how the government is able to use the dreams.

When I first read the synopsis, I thought it would be similar to Minority Report and their PreCogs, but where that was fast-paced and we actually get to see the sci-fi aspects, this instead was introspective. It never really picked up pace. It was like Lalami focused entirely on themes (racism, big brother, controlling tech, etc), and not on plot whatsoever. I am a very plot-based reader, and prefer the books I read to go somewhere. This went nowhere. Sara was just doing the same thing the entire time. Yes, there were flashbacks, but it was like things were happening to the character, rather than the character doing things.

One of those books where your enjoyment comes from thinking through the ideas posed by the characters and their circumstances, and not necessarily the story of their journey itself.

Plotwise this was a hard book to get through. These characters are angry, frustrated, and trapped. Not only do you witness their experience, you actually feel it. It's 300 pages of feeling increasingly infuriated and increasingly helpless to do anything. Is it an enjoyable headspace to be in? No. Does it make you think? Yes.

While I've read similar "big brother" themed books, I thought this was particularly well written and well presented. I especially appreciated the author's commentary on the power of collective action. In American culture we're often encouraged to be independent, to be an individual, and to only act in the interest of ourselves, family, country, etc. This book gives an example of how over reliance on that mentality actually works against the common person, and can help keep harmful institutions in place.

Would recommend if you're looking for an immersive, slower paced read with thoughtful commentary. Would not recommend to those looking for a high action, plot heavy book.

A thought-provoking premise about sacrificing privacy for convenience, with engaging writing but slow pacing and characters that could have had more depth. The idea of detaining people based on dreams of future crimes raises compelling ethical questions. While some parts were hard to follow, the unique concept makes it an intriguing read for fans of speculative fiction.

The Dream Hotel is both a cautionary tale and a comment on government control, technology, and power imbalances in detainment centers. It was an incredible read, and I will certainly be using it for a book club pick in the future.

Thank you to the publisher for the e-copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

@pantheonbooks | #gifted How to tell you about 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗠 𝗛𝗢𝗧𝗘𝗟 by Laila Lalami without telling you too much? That’’s a tough one! I’ll start with the genre. Edelweiss lists it as literary fiction and I agree with that. The story is very much character driven, primarily following one woman who finds herself quite unexpectedly “detained.” But, it’s so much more than just that. This novel also has a heavy dose of sci-fi? Fantasy? Dystopia? In fact, we’d have no story without this element, so perhaps one of those is its true genre.🤷🏻‍♀️⁣
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Regardless of all that, this is a book that just might leave you haunted. I’m going to tell you very little about it because it’s one best gone into blind. I will say that it takes place at a future time that’s not all that far away. It’s a future where people have less control over their own lives than they think they do; a future that’s easily imagined arriving at. THAT makes it scary. Very scary. (Could this be horror?) We see this future world from the perspective of Sara, the woman who’s been detained for reasons she’s completely unclear on. As the story progresses Sara begins to piece together the larger picture, but what can she do?⁣
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That’s all you get. While I found this book frightening in the potential realities of it, I was also completely drawn into the story and couldn’t wait to see what Sara would do next. Like her, I wanted to know the “why” of her detention, the “how” of its onset, and the “when” of its resolution. I’ve always found Laila Lalami to be a gifted storyteller and 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘏𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘭 further cements that opinion. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

Just wow! The Dream Hotel hit the ball out of the park with its unique exploration of the consequences of intrusive technology in the most intimate parts of our daily lives.

In this originally written masterpiece Sara Hussein is interrogated by LAX officials upon returning from a work conference. The mother of young twins is not only interrogated but subsequently detained based on data collected from her dreams. Placed in a locked detention facility and alienated from her family, Sara tries to follow the ever changing rules in hopes of release. What starts as a 21 day hold quickly evolves into a months long battle for freedom. But how does one prove they won’t commit a crime they haven’t committed yet?

Oh boy! I loved this gripping story and the internal turmoil it caused me. Lalami does an excellent job exploring the desire, necessity and ease we have to make technology a part of every facet of our daily lives while simultaneously highlighting the invasive and dangerous effects of technological perception.

Rich in character development and plot, The Dream Hotel will pull you effortlessly into its elaborate web.

Thank you to NetGalley, Pantheon Books and Laila Lalami for an early digital copy.

Ooh this hits just a bit too close to home, in a sci fi future that’s not too far off. Where crimes are “prevented” and everything in our lives are digitally monitored—including our dreams. This dream saver software that guarantees rest and better life quality with fewer hours of sleep sounds allllllll too lovely. And it’s one slippery slope away from this type of timeline. This one is a thought provoker. It’s not fast paced but it keeps moving. You feel the desolation and despair. You feel the ache and hope. And you start to pray this isn’t our future.

This book is so disturbing because I can imagine this actually happening.. and those are some of my favorite stories. The social commentary on technology and surveillance to social injustices is intriguing.

WOW this one is a stunner. I had never read any of this author's work before, but I'll certainly be seeking it out now. It's like Minority Report meets Jessamine Chan's THE SCHOOL FOR BAD MOTHERS. It's dystopian fiction that feels distressingly close to something that could actually happen. Lalami's prose is stunning, clear and vivid, and her character work is truly excellent. I was deeply unsettled by this book in a way similar to hjow I felt when I finished NEVER LET ME GO by Ishiguro--a high compliment!

Thanks to NetGalley, Pantheon, and Laila Lalami for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel is set in a chilling near-future where prison is privatized and incarcerated people are laborers earning profit for the prison corporation; a near-future where technology aids our sleep but also allows the government a way to monitor our dreams; a near future where environmental disaster impacts safety and our food supply.

The Dream Hotel begins when Sara is returning to Los Angeles from a work trip to London. She is detained at LAX because the Risk Assessment Administration (RAA) reviewed data from Sara’s dreams and determined that she is likely to commit a crime. Sara is sent to a retention center for 21 days for observation. All the women at the retention center are at risk of committing a violent crime. The privately owned retention center uses the women to complete work contracts that profit the retention center owners. With ever changing rules and a guard who has it out for her, Sara finds her stay continually extended, separating her from her husband and toddler twins for months.

The Dream Hotel is Sara’s story while she’s in the retention center, including the friendships she forms with other retained women, how she entertains her mind, and her work to organize the women into a strike. It’s also the story of Sara’s marriage and the early days of her motherhood. It’s ordinary events from her marriage and parenting that cause the RAA to label Sara as potentially violent. The structure of the retention center, role of detainees as forced laborers, government’s use of technology to intrude into personal thoughts, and environmental disaster are easy to imagine as part of the near-future in America.

Readers who enjoy dystopian fiction, family stories, and strong, smart, independent female characters will enjoy Lalami’s The Dream Hotel.

In a not too distant future dystopian world, humanity is managed by technology that analyzes dreams. If you are deemed to be a future threat, you are essentially imprisoned and made to work to earn your freedom. The plot brings up some obvious issues about future technological developments, how much surveillance individuals will accept, and what rights to privacy are most important. This is a thought-provoking novel and, perhaps, a nightmare for our future.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon Books for the ARC to read and review.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and Netgalley for an ARC of The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami in return for my honest review.

I enjoyed how this book really made me think about all the data that’s collected on us on a daily basis via social media, word of mouth, etc. Where something you do today that seems minuscule can be taken apart and put back together and held against you.

A near dystopian where a crime you never committed or thought you could commit and you’re being “detained” for it to prevent it.

The Dream Hotel is a near future dystopian that explores consequences of ever present surveillance. Not only is every waking moment tracked, but now dreams are collected and surveilled through an innocuous sleep aid. This data is used to detain citizens who may be at risk of committing future crimes.

The story follows Sara while she is in retention under suspicion that she might harm her husband. While their initial retention period is 21 days, most of the women in Sara's facility stay for much longer sentences.

I found the initial premise fascinating, but the story didn't quite land for me. The messaging was a little heavy handed and I felt like that came at the expense of character development. Most of the side characters felt flat which diminished the emotional impact of the choices that Sara was forced to make.

Set in the near-future, this dystopian sci-fi takes place in a world that FEELS LIKE IT COULD HAPPEN RIGHT NOW. The government has rolled out an AI that monitors all info about each person (including their dreams) to give them a risk score. And if you are too high of a risk, they incarcerate you because you *will* commit a crime in the future, not because you actually have committed one. In this story, Sara, a mother of twins who has done no questionable things, is taken and kept for a long time. A story of government, AI, capitalism, the info we give companies and the very real lack of privacy we have in that data (WE NEED PRIVACY LAWS IN THE US), and power. It was terrifying but also very good.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy. The Dream Hotel is out now.

I’m typically quite fascinated by Science Fiction stories written in a realistic manner by an author who grew up in a culture different from my own. I count Indian computer scientist Aniel Menon’s The Beast with Nine Billion Feet as one of my favorites. It’s engaging, enlightening, and intriguing with important things to say about differences amongst people and modern beauty standards.

Laila Lalami, a Moroccan-American novelist and professor, has written several books and essays that depict the culture she was raised in and involve things like immigration, American citizenship, and maintaining your identity. Her latest book, The Dream Hotel, is her first Science Fiction novel and incorporates some of the themes she has previously addressed.

The book takes place in a “near future” semi-dystopia in which individuals can be “detained” for potential crimes they’ve yet to commit. The detainings are based on a risk scores assigned to each individual that are based on a variety of factors. That includes dreams, as Sarah, the book’s protagonist, finds out in the early pages of the book upon her return to LAX.

Some time before her flight, to battle the insomnia she was plagued with, Sarah allows herself to be implanted with a device called a Dreamsaver. Unbeknownst to her, and most others with Dreamsavers, their dreams are uploaded to servers somewhere in the cloud. Those dreams are one of the aforementioned factors used to determine risk scores. A recent dream of Sarah’s in which she murdered her husband is one of the reasons she becomes detained.

The book follows her throughout her time in “The Dream Hotel,” which is a very prison-esque facility that the people in charge of adamantly tell the public isn’t a prison. Sara becomes friends with many of the other wrongfully detained prisoners and eventually plants the seeds of a revolution within “The Dream Hotel’s” walls.

This is an excellent Science Fiction tale done in a very believable manner. I’ve been on a big Severance kick lately and have been on the hunt for books with a similar feel. This definitely qualifies as such. There’s also a SMIDGE of a Phillip K. Dick and Margaret Atwood influence. I highly recommend The Dream Hotel to fans and non-fans of the genre. There’s something here for anyone to love.

I found this book to be so creative and intriguing! It's titled "Dream Hotel," but we soon find out that it is more like a prison. In this work of Dystopian Fiction, dreams are under surveillance by the government. If your dreams indicate that you MAY commit a crime, then you are detained and then transferred to The Dream Hotel for further observation. This is exactly where we find our main character Sara. She and the other women at The Dream Hotel are attempting to prove their innocence for crimes not yet done. The women form a sisterhood of sorts and try to figure out actions they can take that will lead to their release. We really see the humanity in Sara's story, as she is visited by her family. She has a husband and two young children, that she is trying to come home to. This book explores themes of technology, privacy and freedom. I won't soon forget this book. It is truly unique!

We live in a time where total surveillance is become increasingly normalized — as is, unfortunately, hostility towards anyone deemed “other” for any number of inane, societally-fabricated reasons (at least here in the good ol’ US of A). One place that we have managed to maintain a reprieve from the constant barrage of all-seeing eyes (and omnipresent advertisements) is in our dreams, where we float unencumbered — for now. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami imagines a world just barely past our own, 14 years in the future where that final REM-soaked frontier has at last been conquered by Big Sleep and their sneaky financial agendas.

Our main character is Sara Hussein, a museum archivist, wife, and new mother who finds herself detained at LAX after an algorithm pings her as a potential threat to her husband via a system created to sniff out perpetrators of future crimes (à la Minority Report). She is kept in a “retention center” that everyone keeps assuring her is not a prison, despite the fact that she cannot leave of her own volition and no longer seems to have basic human rights. What should be a 21-day stay is continuously extended, with no end in sight. Unfortunately, I fear I would wind up in the same position as Hussein — I would also make a deal with the proverbial devil to get solid, consistent sleep.

Lalami’s writing is subtle but pointed, and hits you in just the right spot to make the most of its impact. You feel more and more claustrophobic the further you wind through the book, soon enough feeling like you are trapped in this shoddy not-prison with Hussein as well. The novel does an excellent job at making you extraordinarily angry at the systems in place, which in turn makes you more uneasy about the world around us right now (because nothing in this book feels impossible, or even implausible, for our near-future). We explore themes of racial profiling, privacy (or lack thereof), a range of injustices within our prison system, and capitalism that goes completely unchecked in their total control.

I enjoy a measure of discomfort when I’m reading, and The Dream Hotel did not disappoint on that front. It was uncomfortable to imagine this as a possible future, which is an important step in an attempt to divert ourselves from allowing this future to come to pass. While I will be recommending this book to friends, there were a few points that seemed to drag a bit, a point-of-view in the middle that felt out of place, and there was less action and momentum than I anticipated (perhaps intentional, to further showcase the monotony and claustrophobia inside of the retention center). For that reason I would label this as more of a literary sci-fi.

Movies and television shows to watch after you read this book: Minority Report, Severance, A Cabin in the Woods (if you know, you know).

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for sharing an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5-Star Review of The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

Laila Lalami crafts a chilling and thought-provoking premise in The Dream Hotel, exploring the dark intersection of technology, government surveillance, and preemptive justice. In this near-future world, the Risk Assessment Department employs a powerful algorithm to predict who is likely to commit crimes, while the unsettling DreamSaver technology logs individuals’ dreams, using them as evidence of potential criminal intent.

The novel follows a protagonist who finds herself trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare—what was supposed to be a 21-day retention period spirals into an indefinite sentence, a harrowing experience that underscores the dangers of unchecked power.

While the premise is undeniably compelling, the novel’s conclusion left me wanting more. After such an intriguing setup, the ending felt somewhat underwhelming, lacking the punch I had hoped for. Despite this, The Dream Hotel is a gripping, timely read that raises important questions about privacy, free will, and the consequences of a society ruled by predictive surveillance.

It's simplistic to think that this novel is a reboot of "Minority Report," but that's exactly what I feared it would be when I started reading based on the premise. Lalami's novel explores a different variation of what it means to be incriminated and detained for the content of a dream or nightmare. Sara Hussein is detained in LAX on a flight back home, ripping her away from her husband and twin children as they circled the parking lot waiting for her to get through baggage claim. Can you imagine? Lalami asks us to consider the access we give corporations to our most personal data and what they're capable of doing with that information in the name of science and capitalism instead of humanity, care, and empathy. I didn't always feel connected to Sara, her family, or her newfound friends at the detention center, but the novel still made me think about what our constant drive for innovation may cost us.

Sometimes I can be disappointed by the premise of a novel not delivering… but man does The Dream Hotel deliver! It actually went to places I hadn’t even thought of, which can be hard to do with my overactive mind. I sometimes have wild dreams and if I could be detained for them, I could see never getting out honestly. Also, one of my biggest fears is being found guilty of a crime I didn’t commit and no one believing me.

Anyway, the only slight confusion I had with the plot of The Dream Hotel is that Sara is detained because of her dreams they saw through a sleep device she had implanted… which I would assume is the only way they are able to see peoples’ dreams? It didn’t seem like EVERYONE had the devices but who knows.

This was honestly like Minority Report meets Orange is the New Black and it was done so well. I also didn’t see one of the bigger twists coming. It was fast-paced and I enjoyed the interstitials that were included, they really helped pull you into Sara’s world. I received an advance review copy for free and I'm leaving this review voluntarily.