In the not-too-distant future, a sleep-deprived young mother agrees to a brain implant that will cure her insomnia. She doesn't read the fine print on her contract and doesn't connect the new technology to a Big Brother government agency that will moniter her thoughts and use them to lock her up in a hellish Retention Center for an undetermined length of time. Once there, she will lose all rights to privacy, comfort, dignity, and contact with her family. Worst of all, the Retention Centers are contracted out to a private company that hires brutal guards who penalize the inmates for breaking arbitrary rules that they can change on a whim. The penalty for breaking the rules is time added to their sentences. The management company charges their "residents" exorbitant prices for things like tampons, shampoo, snacks, and email. Access to computers is severely limited and the residents are overcharged and denied any recourse if the machines glitch or break down.
Sara Husseini is the daughter of immigrants who has grown up being told to keep her head down and avoid trouble at any cost. When she is detained at the airport after a brief business trip, she is shocked to learn that her risk score (determined by an algorythm that uses everything from actual crimes to the most casual relationships with anyone who has a questionable history and includes the violent content of dreams collected from her brain implant) is slightly higher than is considered safe. Judged a risk to her husband and children, Sara is sent to a Retention Center for what should be a twenty-one day evaluation period, but turns into nearly a year of slave labor under the harshest conitions.
Other reviewers compared The Dream Hotel to Minority Report, but I thought it was more like The Handmaid's Tale, without the gender issues.
This should have been a fascinating book, but I didn't enjoy it much.
Sara, herself, seems like a wimpy person with no real backbone. Aside from a few mild outbursts that raise her risk score, she seems very passive. By the time she develops some gumption , the story is almost over and the ending seems oddly rushed for such a slow book. (i understand some of what made Sara like that, but knowing her history doesn't make her more interesting. Like most of the other characters, she seems underdeveloped. The author seems to assign details (allergies, Muslim background, work as an archivest) at random. At least I could tell who Sara was bcause hers was the main point of view (there is a very brief section in the middle that introduces another character named Julie, who seems like she will be significant, but there isn't really enough about her to make me care) but I found myself confused by the other inmates as I couldn't recall who Victoria, Emily, Toya, and others actually were and had to keep looking them up in my Kindle. The description of conditions was more interesting than any of the people who endured them.
I expected much more from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Pantheon for the opportunity to read a free advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Initial reaction: Wait, what just happened? Is this f-ing play about us???

How it started: It felt a bit like one of those dreams where you know you're supposed to be going somewhere to accomplish some task, but everything is just hazy and blurred along the edges, and your brain is simply not functioning. I'm guessing this was intentional, given the subject matter of the book lol
How it ended: Honestly, I still felt like I was in a hazy dream, but it was more like the feeling you have in the morning when you wake up and you know you had a crazy dream, but you can't remember it. Basically the whole thing just felt like a hazy dream, or like a memory that is always just out of reach.

Notable symptoms I experienced while reading:
☐ Face scrunching (What is happening??)
☐ A bit of worry, because some of these things honestly, seem PRETTY dang plausible
☐ Curiosity
☐ Utter confusion
☐ Acceptance that I simply wouldn't be able to grasp the entire concept

Final verdict:
☐ This book was so incredibly written, and honestly so clever, I think it was a bit too high-brow for me HAHA :P It was very unique and entertaining, but some of the elements just didn't work for me and only served in confusing me more.

I do love a dystopian novel, but even if you don't, The Dream Hotel is a good read. A woman returning from a business trip abroad is detained at the airport by the RAA (Risk Assessment Agency). Her crime? Her dreams, monitored by the RAA, put her at risk of harming her husband. She is transferred to a retention center where she is held with other women accused of the same thing. Her stay is extended...and extended.. The retention center seems no different than a prison, with prison rules that change depending on who is in charge that day. But to be held against your will for your dreams? Alexa, are you listening? What an interesting story that gave me a lot of food for thought. Discuss amongst yourselves. This would be great for book clubs!

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for this ARC of The Dream Hotel!

Traveling home from a conference in London, Sara is detained at LAX for reasons unclear to her. She follows the instructions of the attending officers who won’t even let her notify her husband who’s circling the airport looking for parking. Sara is questioned and data is examined, though she still doesn’t understand why or what the Risk Assessment Association officers are examining on their screens. Ultimately, she is retained and sent to Madison, one of many retention centers that isolate individuals at risk of committing crimes. Their data comes from social media profiles, algorithms from the Cloud, even from dreams recorded by implants sold to help people get better sleep. Of course, these devices also record and store their dreams, adding to the data the RAA uses to monitor risk scores.

Sara represents a number of individuals in society: she is a mother, she is a wife, she is Moroccan, she is strong, yet she’s also been taught to respect authority. She’s got no criminal record, but she’s kept in Madison for the better part of a year, resulting from multiple senseless infractions on the inside. What starts as a standard three week retention invariably grows for detainees, and Sara begrudgingly becomes accustomed to the routines. As her days drag on, Sara realizes complacency may not be her best course of action if she wants to be freed; if the system won’t play by the rules, why should she?

I really liked Lalani’s prose style in this novel, and I think the concept is excellent and timely. I loved following Sara through her experiences at Madison both on her own and with her fellow retainees. I do think that Lalani should have done more with the Eisley subplot - she’s there, then she’s not, then she gets an explanatory chapter that’s underdeveloped. It feels like there could’ve been a multi-POV narrative structure here if other characters had been more built-out. Having only one chapter come from a different POV felt very clunky in the grand scheme of the narrative. That aside, I did enjoy the novel and I think it’s absolutely worth reading.

4.5/5
In this frightening yet fascinating story, I'm not sure whether to label it science fiction or a cautionary tale. Imagine living in a world where nothing is private. Where our friends, our family members, losing our cool on a bad day, and even our very dreams contribute to our risk assessment score. The higher your score, the more likely you are to commit a crime.

This is Sara Hussein's reality. Pulled aside for questioning after an exhausting transatlantic flight, Sara soons finds herself locked away in Madison retention center, where she's "not" a prisoner, but she's not free to go.

Watching the women of Madison retention center struggle under arbitrary rules and power hungry attendants was frustrating. The whole idea that anything you say, do, or dream can be manipulated and construed to mean absolutely anything is terrifying.

I'm always on board for a dystopian tale, and The Dream Hotel did not disappoint! Laila Lalami has created characters we care about. Her prose is on point, and the storyline is spellbinding. My only complaint is I wish it were a bit longer! I'd love to read more about Julie!

There are plentiful things to ponder and topics to discuss from motherhood and friendship to politics and power. The Dream Hotel would be a perfect buddy read or book club selection!

Read this if you like:
• Stories with a political twist
• Introspective characters
• Stories that will make you think
• Dystopian fiction
• Bookclub reads

This book didn’t deliver. The protagonist was unlikeable, mostly due to generic characterization. The themes and messaging regarding dream and behavior surveillance were repetitive. Stylistically, I did not enjoy the emails, memos and articles that were interspersed with the narration; it failed to add any meaningful context. The section in the middle of the novel with Julie’s story was unnecessary and random - the reader never heard from her again which felt like a plot hole. As a voracious reader of speculative fiction, this novel did not add anything new to the genre.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the advanced reader copy of this book, which was published on March 4. The story grabbed me immediately. We meet Sara Hussein in the not too distant (and scary) future, where our data is being mined (more than it is today).

Laila Lalami is particularly effective at describing scents and smells. My one criticism is that her use of “artifacts” disrupted the flow of the story for me. Maybe that was intentional.

Themes include power/control, art, scary algorithms, freedom and friendship.

“Freedom isn’t a blank slate, she wants to tell them. Freedom is teeming and complicated and, yes, risky, and it can only be written in the company of others.”

I plan to read more of Laila Lalami’s books.

I loved this book! We follow Sara, a woman just trying to fly home from a business trip to see her family. Unfortunately, due to the dream monitoring from her neural link, her risk score is too high and she gets thrown into a "detainment center". This is commentary on the digital age of constant surveillance and the unfairness of the profitization of the privitized prison industry. This book had me stressed, tense, and sad. I will definitely be checking out more books from Laila Lailami. My only complaint is that I with the ending had been taken a bit farther, it felt a little predictable which is not what I'd hoped for based on the rest of the story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for a fair and honest review.

A timely and fascinating new take on Kafka's "The Trial. Laila Lalami is back with a new novel that tackles the a range of issues from climate change, the proliferation of advertising, and the increased stripping of rights that we give when we engage with technology. Written with Lalami's trademark humanity and imagination, "The Dream Hotel" is one part Severance, one part Kafka. Simultaneously modern and dreamy.

The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami

“Freedom isn’t a blank slate. Freedom is teeming and complicated and, yes, risky

The Dream Hotel is a dystopian novel set in a near and very believable future where the US government has partnered with a large tech company to use its algorithm in service of crime prevention.

Following a mass shooting, the government passes the Crime Prevention Act which allows it to mine data and detain people it finds are likely to commit crimes. Everyone is assigned a risk assessment score, which is based on all the data available about a person — social media activity, job, family life, driving record, and even dreams. Detained people are then sent to “public safety centers” for investigation and possible prosecution.

Under this backdrop, our protagonist, Sara, gets pulled aside while going through customs attempting to reenter the US. The novel follows her experience in — and attempt to escape — one of these public safety centers.

I really enjoyed this. Its themes are terrifying and its algorithmic policing plot feels very possible, especially in light of the fact that an unelected tech billionaire currently has unprecedented access to US citizens’ private data and recent reporting that the State Department plans to conduct an AI assisted review of student visa holders' social media accounts to police foreign nationals' conduct and speech.

The writing really forces the reader to feel the indignity of being detained when you’ve done nothing wrong, and I particularly liked how well it shows the ways private prisons are interested in — and profit from — keeping people incarcerated.

I found the final 25% to be a little weaker than the rest of the book and the ending anticlimactic, but maybe that’s the point. These systems drain people’s will and beat them down, and fighting back most often requires small, unsexy actions.

Recommended if you enjoyed Minority Report, The Candy House, and I Who Have Never Known Men.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for an early digital copy of this book.

For a Sci-fi book, this was scarily real. The writing was reflective and humorous with an edge of scariness built in because I truly believe something of this nature could happen in our future. I felt immersed in the story and the saga of Sarah!

THE DREAM HOTEL by Laila Lalami hit me hard -- in the very best way. In a terrible version of reality -- one that is also all too imaginable given our current time of surveillance, suspicion, and intrusive technology, a woman is accused of a crime she did not yet commit and the price of 21 days of isolation from her target is extended as she fails to meet the rigid requirements and shifting rules of the surveillance state. Well-written, marvelously paced, this story kept me on the edge of my seat, wanting and also afraid to find out what happens next, particularly when a change agent enters the scene and disrupts everything. I don't typically enjoy thriller/suspense/techno-based stories, but this one was a shining example of what is possible, particularly with the questions raised about identity and what it is to know a person--and yourself. I received a copy of this book and these are my own, unbiased thoughts.

3.5 STARS

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
Genre: Dystopian fiction
Themes: Surveillance, data privacy, oppression

Returning home from a work conference abroad, Sara is stopped at the airport, detained and taken to a retention center where other women are held under observation while they try to prove their innocence. What crime did Sara commit?

Well, Sara has a brain implant that is supposed to help her sleep better. However, it also stores her dreams and data, which are reviewed by the Risk Assessment Administration, a government agency that determines whether her dreams may foreshadow crimes she might commit in the future. THE DREAM HOTEL follows Sara’s fight for freedom and reminds you to always read tech’s terms and conditions.

Laila Lalami started writing the book in 2014, which makes THE DREAM HOTEL even more eerie given the influence artificial intelligence, surveillance and technology are having on the world today. The concept of the book? 5/5. The writing? 4/5. But the middle was a repetitive slog, and the book ended with a whisper rather than a bang.

Thank you to #NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for an advanced reader copy of #TheDreamHotel.

Lalami writes a timely speculative dystopian novel that is scary and delightful at the same time. Sara is stopped at LAX when returning from London by the RAA, the Risk Assessment Administration, for the potential to commit a violent act. She is placed in a detention center, not a prison, as they say, for 21 days, which becomes much longer as any "infraction" the powers that be deemed significant increases her time there. Not only are people's actions and words being monitored but their thoughts and dreams are as well. How much longer until this becomes our reality? Orwellian and beyond. 5 stars for Lalami who deserves a huge breakout hit. Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this advanced copy

As soon as I read the synopsis of this book, which sounded like a cross between Minority Report (movie) and The School for Good Mothers (book), I knew I wanted to read this book. I was so excited for this book to be scary, uncomfortable, and shocking, while also feeling all too close to reality. Unfortunately, something about this book fell flat for me. I cannot even quite put my finger on what it was, but I just never got into it. It took me twice as long to read as a book of this length normally would, even when I sat down with a few hours ahead of me to just get lost in the world of the book. I just never really felt like picking it up, and even when I did, I found myself bored and trudging through it.

The book felt really drawn out, and when I realized how long it was taking me to read it, I figured it must just a be a long book (I was reading on my Kindle and didn't have an awareness of the page count). So I was shocked when I looked it up to find it was only 336 pages. It felt like far more, and not in a good way.

I found the main character to be really flat and dry. Imagine being unexpectedly being taken to a retention center when landing at the airport, returning home from a business trip. Imagine you cannot hug your children or husband who are waiting at the airport for you; in fact, you cannot even see them to inform them of what's going on. Imagine having your whole life essentially taken from you and having no control or power to change your situation. And then imagine showing/expressing/feeling little-to-no emotion over it. That's your main character in this book. I'm not even a mother, and I know I would feel absolute anguish over being separated from my twin toddlers, missing out on their daily life, big milestones, etc. While Sara of course wanted to be home with her family, she expressed more frustration with her husband not calling or visiting enough than she did over being separated from her children. There was a strange disconnect there, and as a result, it left me feeling disconnected from the main character.

While everything about the retention center was awful and frustrating, this book just never made me feel the big emotions that I expected to feel. I just couldn't get invested in the story. The first half of the book went almost nowhere, then things took a turn and it seemed to be going somewhere, then the ending came rather abruptly. The pacing felt off to me and it definitely impacted my enjoyment of the book.

I also think that with it being called The Dream Hotel, and the whole premise being about people being able to be punished for their dreams, there actually wasn't a ton of focus on dreams in the book. Sara had a few dreams that were mentioned in the book, she talked about the device she got that allowed her dreams to be commodified, but beyond that, it really wasn't a focus of the book. We never heard or learned about the dreams of her fellow "inmates" and friends in the retention center. I thought it would be a bigger part of the story and was letdown that it wasn't.

Even though this book wasn't for me, I don't think it's a bad book. I think the premise was great, but the execution just didn't work for me. I think if you've never read a book like this before, you may really love it. But because I read a dystopian book with a somewhat similar plot in the past, I couldn't help but compare the two, and this one will leave nowhere near the impact on me that the other book did.

2.5 stars, rounded up

Thank you to Pantheon and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

this was a bleak, nightmarish dystopian read that explores how AI is used to monitor dreams and use that data against people in the justice system. majorrrr black mirror vibes!!

giving this one a 3/5 because of how slowly the story unravels. the pace only quickens and gains momentum at the end, which made the ending feel rushed and oversimplified. for such a nuanced and complex premise, i was expecting an ending that wasn’t so..abrupt.

it was also difficult for me to connect to the main character and her relationships — i felt like the characterization fell flat and one dimensional. this added to the coldness and hostility the characters faced but i wished there was more emotional depth in how the characters interacted with each other, with their environment.

i remain a big fan of laila lalalmi’s work, however, i just don’t think this was as moving or thoughtful as i hoped it to be.

thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for my advanced copy!!

It's the year 2039 and we're in Southern California with protagonist Sara Hussein. She's the mother of young twins, an archivist at the Getty, and on her way home from a work trip in London when she's detained at LAX. It seems that her "risk score" is above the acceptable level and she's flagged for "retention". Note, it's a "retention center" not "jail".

In this year 2039, everything is tracked and recorded and used to generate the individual's risk score. All the things we're tracking in good old 2025: steps, heart rate, phone conversations, texts, browser clicks, security cameras, etc. Also, all the Terms & Conditions on those apps and consent forms we so blindly click "agree" on, well that data is aggregated and used too. Last but not least, in this not-so-distant future, a sleep aid implant that guarantees "better sleep in fewer hours" happens to also keep (and commoditize) a record of your dreams. And Sara signed off on that, without much awareness, because she was desperate for sleep (young twins).

The setup, the rationale (public safety) and the monetization of the "retention centers" (not jail): the women can lower their retention periods by signing up to work, for which they're barely paid, are chilling. Frighteningly chilling. This book is part "Orange is the New Black", part "Severance" and, in this climate of 2025, a lot of horror. There's humor in the bleakness but boy this is bleak. Frightening. Stripping the women of any shred of dignity, sadistic guards, crap food, privileges given and taken at a whim. The arbitrariness of the risk scores. The Dream Hotel was a nightmare.

Lalami knows how to ratchet up the tension and keep you on the edge of your seat. We're with Sara every step of her journey. Relentless.

My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for the digital ARC. (pub date 3/4/2025)

A fascinating premise, done very well. In the somewhat near future (no year is specified, but it doesn't seem that far off from present day), surveillance is everywhere. Sara is a museum archivist with twin toddlers, returning from a business trip in London. She is stopped at LAX by "Risk Assessment" agents, who tell her that her dream data has been flagged because she's dreamed of killing her husband. She is baffled and pushes back, but she is put into "retention" for 21 days so she can get "risk score" back down. Of course, her sentence gets extended time and again.

This book reminded me of The School for Good Mothers, which I found utterly devastating and so impactful. Similarly to that book, we follow Sara as she adjusts to life in a place that is "not a prison," but so extremely strips away one's rights and humanity that the distinction has no meaning. Sara's every move is surveilled and interrogated, and the goalposts keep moving. Sara learns quickly that anything she and the other women do can be seen as defiant, and the attendants at the facility have such discretion that they can basically make up rules whenever they want.

This is definitely a read that wore me down, but I found it fascinating and compulsively readable nonetheless. It's terrifying to think of our already horrible criminal system being made even more horrible by even more surveillance than we already have, and this book also made me think about how our conceptions of "normal" are entirely dictated by people with power. Of course that's not an original thought, but I thought Lalami did an amazing job of depicting how arbitrary it all feels.

Sara's emotions about being away from her family, feeling betrayed and like no one trusts her, and being incredibly angry all resonated, and I really enjoyed her relationships with her fellow confinees. It's hard to describe this as enjoyable because so much of the book I wanted to punch every single person who worked at the facility, but Sara's revelations about state power and technological creep are really interesting, and the plot moves fast enough to keep you going. All in all, glad I read this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.25 stars)
**A Haunting and Thought-Provoking Read**

*The Dream Hotel* by Laila Lalami is a beautifully crafted novel that weaves together mystery, memory, and the immigrant experience with Lalami’s signature lyrical prose. The story is both atmospheric and introspective, pulling readers into a world where dreams and reality blur in compelling ways. The characters are deeply drawn, and the novel’s themes of belonging and identity resonate long after the last page. While the pacing lags slightly in the middle, the novel’s emotional depth and elegant storytelling make it a captivating and rewarding read.

i'm gonna be real. at some points in the book, i could not tell whether what i was reading was fiction because of what today's current political and societal environment is like. nothing like immersive, am i right ladies? 🤩 so i have to say, this book felt very gray and monotone, like visually in my mind. also, movement wise since it felt very stagnant for majority of the book. but i think it is meant to represent sara's time at the retention center. i can't really say the premise of this is cool, since we're like two steps from experiencing this in real life and that is not cool whatsoever. the exploration of surveillance, yes, which would have made this a great book to have read in my analytical reading and writing course freshman year. i feel like this could have been better fleshed out. there were a few plotholes and flat characters. quite a bit of social commentary in this. could be a good book, but not particularly my biggest cup of tea. yes, thank you netgalley!