This is like if Orange Is The New Black, Black Mirror, and the Minority Report had a baby. I enjoyed this audiobook - the narration was wonderful and the story overall kept me interested and intrigued - and also a tad scared because of how realistic this felt. It had a lot of big, important messages while also being a propulsive read - I never fully connected with the characters. The author did a great job though of making the reader truly feel the anxiety and stress that the characters were going through and the awful and unfair ways they were treated. How scary to be held accountable for something that happened in your dreams - a little too close to reality in my opinion but that was the point wasn't it?

If you love Black Mirror - I think you will love this one - it reminded of like a really great episode of that show!

This is one of those books that is going to stick with me for the rest of my life. It is shaping up to be my favorite book of the year.

This had me hooked from the very beginning. It's a very suspenseful throughout-story. The characters were extremely likable. The only thing I don't like is the ending. I felt like it was way too rushed for the story.

I have so many thoughts about this book. When I say I was engrossed from the very begging.. I was ENGROSSED. I thought that the arbitrary rating system was scarily close to being true. I thought the AI / app surveillance themes were on the nose. I wanted SO much more though. I wanted way more depth from Julia. I wanted Sara to respond to Julia's emails and really explore that fork. I understand the ending was very anti-climatic and the detention center pushed her out for the same reasons she would have been brought in. The rules bend and change and in the end it all means nothing and the only people who suffer are these women and their families. I wish they discussed more about why it was only women being held in these prisons? Overall, gosh, the writing and characters were great, but I just wanted more. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for this eARC.

This book was so much darker and more emotional than I expected. As a mother, the idea of being separated from my kids and family is heart-breaking especially for a crime I haven't committed. The twist at the end was also great.

This feels like a contemporary The Handmaid's Tale.
Technology purposed for the greater good becomes a weapon of control and enforcement.
Constantly encouraged by her husband to keep quiet, all the good behavior to help ensure her release, Sara cannot just exist in Madison, supposedly not a prison yet holding women captive.
With tidbits about the technology shift, privatizing prisons, the never ending plight of women, a brutal examination of humanity and activism.

I don't think there is a better time to read this book than now. The Dream Hotel's commentary on tech, surveillance, and AI couldn't be more timely.

I agree with other reviewers in that it take a little bit to get into and that the pacing in the later half of the novel started to drag. However, the entire premise was so haunting that I was able to set it all aside. I think it's a great read—just don't expect to fly through it.

Wow -- I could not put this book down. I don't tend to read this genre of book, but I was intrigued based on the buzz. This is an incredibly well written and prescient novel about surveillance and being locked up for unknown infractions all without due process. The main character, Sara is pulled over by customs officials upon returning to the U.S. from London, and is not sure why. She is shuffled off to a detainment center for initially 21 days as long as she is obedient. The center is in an abandoned elementary school that still has remnants of its old identity in the various areas and classrooms. She had an implant put in to help her sleep better (very scary given that I have sleep apnea and my doctor had suggested he could do an implant and I decided on the old school CPAP machine instead). The implant gives nefarious forces in government/private agencies access to her dream data and profile her and others based on it. With everything happening today in terms of lack of due process, detention, and AI and data, this book hits really close to home which makes it even more scary. I recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

3.75/5

It took a while to get into this book but once I was in I was pretty hooked. Really thoughtful commentary around technology, surveillance and human rights. I think to get into the story quicker it would have benefited from more information up front about the dreams and devices. I also would have liked to have more resolution at the end for the members of the retention centre, as it ended feeling slightly unfinished to me. But perhaps that was the point :)

A sprawling, intensely thought-provoking story about human rights and privacy, The Dream Hotel may be flawed in its storytelling structure—it often feels fragmented and lacks consistent narrative flow. If it were a TV series, it would be the kind that got extended beyond its intended seasons, with writers inventing new conflicts and arcs that weren’t properly seeded from the beginning.

Yet, this doesn’t overshadow the novel’s brilliance: an instantly gripping speculative premise (what happens when our dreams are monitored and monetized by corporations or governments?) paired with a deeply empathetic portrayal of realizing that a larger governing body may not have civilian rights as its priority. As someone who’s had visa-related incidents at customs, some of the depicted emotions felt so realistic they were almost PTSD-inducing.

The Dream Hotel isn’t written like a page-turner—it took me over 3 months to finish its 300+ pages—and the segmented structure doesn’t help with building momentum. Still, I have to give it high praise for its emotional depth and how strongly it resonates beyond its pages.

Lalami’s latest is speculative fiction that’s set in an America consumed with the government containing potential threats. Sara is a successful professional who is returning to L.A. from an international conference. She’s pulled aside at the airport by the Risk Assessment Administration and taken to a facility because she poses a theoretical danger. She hasn’t committed any crime, but she might. What begins as 21 days of incarceration stretches out with no end in sight.

The reason for her being held is not due to any action on her part, but because of her dreams. The RAA is now monitoring people for suspicion of future violence that is exhibited through their dream activity. America has become a country consumed with power and judges people not merely on wrongdoing, but on any potential threat, even if unwarranted.

The concept of government obsessed with control is not unique, but a solid proposition. The women who are confined seem to have lost all their rights, leaving them stranded and without recourse. Unfortunately, this effort gets sidetracked by the brief interlude of a corporation involved in the dream captures that has a secondary agenda. This subplot was not fully fleshed out and needed to be more significant to make it integral to the main plot.

Another issue concerns the inmates’ actions opposing the RAA that seem contrary to the tight controls at the facility. The ending is somewhat anticlimactic and not equal to the intensity of the plight of the captive women. Overall, the book fails to live up to its potential and misses the mark, despite a promising premise that has merit.

thank you to netgalley for the e-arc. i thought this was slow and dragging as fuck but then again it was flowery, literary fiction.

Rating: 2.5–3 stars
Thanks to Pantheon and NetGalley for a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

The Dream Hotel starts with a fascinating and unsettling premise that feels eerily believable in our tech-heavy reality. A world where dreams are monitored and your behavior is constantly evaluated? There’s a lot of potential in that.

But while the concept pulled me in, the story itself didn’t hold me. The pacing dragged, and I struggled to stay engaged. I never felt fully pulled into Sara’s experience, even as I understood the frustration and fear built into the world around her. It felt like a story that should’ve hit harder than it did. I switched to an audio copy in hopes it would hold my interest more. No luck.

Well this was Brutally Bleak. Take your existential dread about AI algorithms and Handmaid's Tale levels of institutionalized misogyny and incarceration, and you have Dream Hotel. It's very much an angry and excoriating commentary on all the ways technocracies prey on society's worst insecurities to profit off of its citizen's desperation and vulnerabilites. Perhaps someday when things take a turn in a sustained way for the better, this story can serve as a reminder of dark times. But as of now, this does nothing but make me wallow with no catharsis in sight for more than 50% of the book.

Rating: 3.5⭐
Diversity: yes

An eerily believable tech-dystopia that had me side-eying all my devices.

Set in a near-future America where surveillance has gone from creepy to full-on dystopian (all in the name of “public safety”), The Dream Hotel follows Sara, who’s flagged by the government because her “risk score” suggests she might be a threat to her own family. She’s detained in a so-called “retention center” until she’s deemed safe—whatever that means.

The story kicks off like a fast-paced thriller, slows down to explore deeper emotional and ethical territory, then ramps back up for a sharp finish. It’s less about plot twists and more about the what ifs—what if your data decided who you are? What if safety came at the cost of your soul?

Personally, it had great potential, or I had certain expectations... You get a clear ending, but it happened so quick, and left other questions unanswered. I was disenchanted by the end. I really wanted to like it.

This book dives into the ethics of surveillance tech, the illusion of safety, and what happens when your sense of privacy is no longer yours. If you’re into Black Mirror vibes with literary flair, this one’s definitely worth checking out.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed the beginning and got halfway through but the story slowed down and it wasn’t engaging enough to pull me back into the story after a few days away from reading.

"The Dream Hotel" by Laila Lalalmi delves into a thought-provoking exploration of a near-future world where technology and government surveillance blur the lines between public and private life. Set against a backdrop of advanced technology, the novel paints a vivid picture of a society where personal autonomy, even in the realm of thoughts, is increasingly compromised.

The premise of the book is undeniably timely and relevant, reflecting on how pervasive surveillance technologies can erode individual freedoms. Lalalmi skillfully weaves together a narrative that challenges readers to contemplate the implications of living in a society where privacy is a luxury of the past. Through her storytelling, she creates a world that feels unsettlingly close to our own, prompting readers to reflect on their relationship with technology and the boundaries of personal privacy.

One of the novel's strengths lies in its ability to blend social commentary with a compelling storyline. The characters are relatable, grappling with issues that feel both familiar and futuristic. As the protagonist navigates this dystopian landscape, the reader is drawn into a web of intrigue and ethical dilemmas, questioning where the line between security and personal freedom should be drawn.

Overall, "The Dream Hotel" is a captivating read that resonates long after the final page. Lalalmi's exploration of themes such as government overreach and the impact of technology on individual rights is both thought-provoking and deeply relevant. For readers interested in speculative fiction that challenges societal norms and explores the consequences of technological advancement, this book offers a compelling narrative that is difficult to put down.

The themes of this book were very thought provoking as it explored a world that is scarily close to our own future. It asked questions about how much we would want the government/private industry intervening into our private lives through technology and the use of algorithms. I liked how it went even further and explored the use and commodification of things like dreams, which I did like.

Besides the overall theme being intriguing, I thought the book itself was just meh. It ended up being a lot of long passages that rambled on about things that didn't feel important. We focused so much on diving into random stories in Sara's past or a day in the life of Julie at her dream tech job. I found myself wanting each story to be shorter, and overall was a bit bored with the plot or lack thereof.

When I started this book, I was pretty skeptical because the synopsis wasn't super interesting to me, but as the book when on I found myself more and more interested in the plot! This book was a great dystopian novel with commentary on AI and the surveillance state and it definitely isn't too far out there that it doesn't seem like an unrealistic path we could go down. The idea that the government is watching our dreams and persecuting people for crimes they've literally only dreamed about is absolutely terrifying and the author did a great job showing how it would work. I feel for the main character, Sara, as someone who has been plauged my whole life with nightmares where I need to behave in a way that I never would in real life. There was also a lot of great commentary on the prison industrial complex and how people treat people in custody, even when they haven't had their trial yet. My only complaint is that the start of this book didn't hook me as much as the later half did. There was a lot of world building that needed to get done, and I wasn't gripped by it until the social commentary started. Overall though, I had a good time and I found myself cheering the main character on as she stood up for herself and faught for her freedom.

This book definitely hit hard as a warning of what will happen if we continue down the path we're on.

Our protagonist, Sara, is being held at a retention center to be kept under observation based on an algorithm that flags her as someone "likely to commit a crime." If your score determines you are a risk, you are held for a minimum of 21 days pending review. It becomes clear that hardly anyone gets out after 21 days and the for profit system is working against them.

This was really great commentary on the dangers of technology versus privacy and the horrors of a for profit prison system. I was engaged and tense through the whole book. I wish that I didn't see us hurtling rapidly in the direction of this novel, but here we are. This was definitely a different vibe than I thought it would be since I went in mostly blind except for the name and cover, but I was pleasantly surprised.