"We blame the algorithm for our predicament, she thinks, but the algorithm was written by people."

In a world where technology is constantly evolving, what are we willing to sacrifice to gain lifestyle improvements?
And in this world, where you can be held by the government for simply dreaming, where are the lines between "good" and "bad" people?

What a read. Laila Lalami effortlessly blends the real technological developments of our day-to-day with real world fears. This is the second book I've read from this author (the first being "Unconditional Citizens") and I can see how she's brought her personal experiences (and likely experiences of those around her) into the storyline of this book.

The Dream Hotel is the kind of book that gets under your skin. It doesn’t rely on flashy twists or nonstop action—it creeps up on you, making you more uneasy with every page. Laila Lalami imagines a future where technology infiltrates even the most private corners of life, turning something as personal as sleep into a tool for surveillance. The scariest part? It feels entirely plausible.

The novel moves at a steady pace, building tension through bureaucracy, red tape, and the slow unraveling of Sara Hussein’s reality. The mix of traditional narrative with reports, documents, and official statements adds to the unsettling atmosphere, making it feel all too real. The characters are nuanced, their relationships complicated, and the questions the book raises about privacy, control, and power linger long after the last page.

It’s disturbing in the best way—thought-provoking, timely, and impossible to ignore. If you like dystopian fiction that feels like a warning rather than an escape, this one is for you.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for the advanced copy.

Technology can be scary.

This speculative-tech is the most frightening when you can see how it could happen. In this near future, extreme acts of violence has forced the government to take action. Everyone gets a criminal risk score which is determined by your past actions, your connections to other risky people, you're everyday interactions, and now, your dreams. When your risk score is a high enough number, you are put in retention centers for a period of time to determine if you are a risk to society and your loved ones.

This book takes the fear of technology becoming means of surveillance and puts it on steroids. There is a hint of the movie Minority Report in the sense that, in this world, the government seems to think that they can stop future crimes from happening if they use data to interpret a person's likelihood of committing a crime. A thrilling concept, to be sure, but what makes this story gripping is the very real depiction of retention centers and how despite clearly stating they the people being held are not criminals, blatantly operate like a prison. It's devastating commentary if you think about what has happened in the past and what is happening now, to, primarily, immigrant people.

The dream element, makes you constantly question if what is happening to Sara is real or not and I loved the crashing twists that resulted. The ending was a little abrupt, and I wish that it was more fleshed out but maybe that's because I was so invested and rooting for Sara to be a catalyst of change. Maybe we will get lucky and Laila Lalami will write a sequel to keep the story going.

This book will make you mad, make you want to revolt, and make you want to read the fine print.

I really, really wanted to love this book. In fact, I expected to be completely captivated by it—just as I was with other not-too-distant future books such as Land of Milk and Honey. But The Dream Hotel didn’t quite do it for me. I felt as though it never quite found its rhythm. The pacing felt sluggish, the tension too drawn out. I kept glancing at the page number, calculating how much more I had left—never a good sign.

That being said, I thought that the idea behind the book was quite good. A fascinating thought experiment, but the execution didn’t quite land for me. Set in a not-too-distant future, crime probability is calculated kind of like a credit score—and like a credit score, nobody is quite sure how the score is calculated. Social media, sure, arrest record, occupation…but what else? Turns out, that the algorithm is also fed by DNA information (kinda wish I hadn’t done that Ancestry test now), and even dreams. It’s all very Minority Report and Black Mirror.

Sara, the protagonist, is arrested after her score—518—marks her as high risk for committing violence against her husband, Elias. Very strange because by all accounts, she’s an upstanding and respectable citizen. However, off she goes to what should have been a three-week detention but then it spirals into a year.

The book is highly political, which I appreciated. It got me thinking about fertility trackers being weaponized in a post-Roe world and the broader dangers of smart cities, data surveillance, and predictive policing. It also served as a reminder of why oversharing online can be so dangerous—how easily our personal lives can be transformed into metrics used against us. It’s all fun and games now, but, will those rants and overthinking and all these reviews eventually turn against us into a score? Are they now?

1984-esque dystopian women’s fiction. With all the excitement lately over artificial intelligence, this book takes a look at the potential danger of giving so much power to big data/big tech and the government and the resulting invasion of privacy. Not terribly pacey, but beautifully written. Deeply disturbing.

The Dream Hotel is a dystopian look at the potential solution to one of a problem that plagues people: sleeplessness. After struggling with sleep due to the arrival of new twins, a mother opts to get a procedure that helps to enhance the quality of one’s sleep. The problem is that this also opens her dreams up to government surveillance, which leads her to being detained. For fans of The Handmaids Tale, The Dream Hotel is an excellent novel that questions technological solutions and government oversight

Oof ma goof. This is not billed as a horror story but it should be. Laila Lalami has tapped into the fears I have of what this country will become in the next 10+ years in a realistic, tragic, and extremely scary way. In short, the government is tracking people's dreams (if they subscribe to a system that can help you sleep better). If your dreams suggest you may commit a crime (ala Minority Report), you are sent to a "retention center" that's pretty much just a prison until you can prove you are not a danger to society (or you have a really good lawyer).

Sara Hussein, our protagonist, is sent to a center after a confusing run-in with a TSA agent on her way back to LA from London, and is sent to the center, away from her toddler twins and loving husband, without a clear path on how to get out. Like I said, absolutely horrifying and scarily prescient. What did she dream about that was so bad? Is this actually because of her last name? And how the heck is she going to get out?

Lalami does an incredible job of taking us through the ins and outs of this future bureaucracy, red tape, and general government run nonsense. We learn things in trickles that will make you gasp, and while not every question is answered, and I felt that it gets a bit muddled at the end, I am just so impressed with this book mostly because I've never encountered anything like it. It will not help the anxiety you feel about the current state of our country, but sometimes you have to face things that fear you in literature, right?

Wow, what a powerful book.

I highly recommend this book to all lovers of futuristic, horror, and women's fiction.

This is a look at what can happen when we let our lives become too entangled with Smart products, allow cookies into our lives, and allow any company that mines for data to get ahold of us. It's too late for most of us, but had I read this novel decades ago, I would never have let a computer or smart phone into my life.

Of course, this is just fiction, right? Or is it? The ideas in this novel may very well become a true thing of the not-so-distant future. We have no privacy anymore, so why not take away the one last thing that is private...our dreams that we have while sleeping.

sband are having a terrible problem with sleep issues. They have just had twins and can't seem to get any rest, and it's affecting their lives. Sometimes to dangerous levels. So they get this dream implant that will help them sleep better and become refreshed in less than 8 hours. Nobody let them know of what else this handy sleep help could do to them. Naturally, Sara and her husband had failed to read all of the fine print - all 15 or so pages. Now, we can be monitored for committing crimes in the future, crimes that we would never consider or carry out outside of our daydreaming and night dreams.

As the synopsis/recap states, Sara is detained on her way home from a trip; she must now be detained for her own good. Due to this implant/machine, we have a score, and each infraction ups our score. Believe me, that is not a good thing.

I can't discuss much more of this book without giving a lot of it away. This is the perfect horror novel (well, to me, it was a horror novel) because it uses a lot of truth while creating its fiction.

*ARC supplied by the publisher Pantheon Press/ Penguin Random House, the author, and NetGalley.

Today’s ‘1984.’ This speculative dystopian novel depicts a world where, in the name of crime prevention, algorithms are used to rate risks from citizens, and those with scores that cross a determined threshold are detained for an observation period. Reading this book in 2025 may be a tough sell, when many want their reading to be an escape from the current climate and events. But while this is a harrowing read, it is also well-written and smart. It asks questions about the surveillance and prolific information-gathering of our lives, what we unthinkingly give up in exchange for convenience, the algorithmic use (and potential misuse) of that data, and the effect on our humanity. It is also a story about friendship, motherhood, freedom and self-identity.

This is a book I will be thinking about for a long time. It’s not perfect – but it is a very compelling and thought-provoking read. I highly recommend it.
[My thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for the opportunity to read an eARC of this book.]

Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel is a chilling and thought-provoking dystopian novel that left me utterly unsettled—in the best way possible. Set in a near-future America where AI and surveillance have infiltrated even the most private corners of our lives, the novel imagines a world where a neuroprosthetic device called Dreamsaver monitors people’s dreams and assigns them risk scores. When Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American archivist, is detained upon returning to Los Angeles from a work trip, she learns that her own dreams have flagged her as a potential threat to her husband. What begins as a brief detainment turns into an indefinite stay at Madison, a private retention center that operates under the guise of crime prevention.

Lalami expertly builds an atmosphere of creeping dread, where bureaucracy and corporate greed converge to create a system that is both terrifyingly plausible and deeply unjust. Through Sara’s experience, the novel interrogates the intersections of technology, government overreach, and systemic bias. The parallels to today’s debates on data privacy, predictive policing, and the for-profit prison industry make The Dream Hotel feel alarmingly relevant. At times, it reminded me of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, though this novel managed to get even further under my skin.

The book’s pacing is gripping, with Lalami interspersing the narrative with emails, reports, and procedural documents that add layers to the unsettling world she has created. However, my one critique lies in Sara’s relationship with her husband, Elias. His characterization felt a bit underdeveloped—almost a caricature of an absent partner—which made some of Sara’s emotional stakes less convincing.

Despite this minor flaw, The Dream Hotel is an engrossing and deeply disturbing read that lingers long after the final page. Fans of Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain Gang All Stars will find much to dissect and discuss here. I’d absolutely recommend this book, but be warned—it might just make you lose sleep.

3.75 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for the ARC!

Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel is a chilling and thought-provoking dive into a dystopian future where even our dreams are no longer private. Set in a world where citizens are "retained" and monitored under the guise of security and preventing future crimes, Lalami masterfully crafts a narrative that is equal parts haunting and insightful, forcing readers to confront uncomfortable truths about surveillance, control, and autonomy.

The titular Dream Hotel serves as both a sanctuary and a prison—a place where dreams are recorded, analyzed, and exploited. Through a mosaic of perspectives from both "retainees" and "retention officers", Lalami introduces us to characters grappling with the loss of freedom and the intrusion of the state into their most intimate thoughts. Each character's story adds depth to the central theme: how much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice in the name of safety?

Lalami’s prose is sharp, blending evocative imagery with incisive social commentary. She excels at building tension, and the world she creates feels increasingly and disturbingly plausible. The novel’s pacing keeps you hooked, though at times the shifts between storylines and somewhat abrupt ending left me wishing for more closure with certain characters.

What elevates The Dream Hotel is its relevance—its exploration of surveillance culture, the commodification of personal data, and the erasure of privacy hits frighteningly close to home. It’s the kind of book that lingers in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page. The Dream Hotel is a powerful and unsettling tale that will resonate with fans of speculative fiction and anyone who’s ever wondered just how much freedom we’re willing to trade for possible comfort. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy dystopian novels with a philosophical edge!

Thank you to Pantheon and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on March 4, 2025.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for the eARC!

I knew this book was going to be unique, but I don't think I was prepared for just how much I would enjoy it. It's a meditation on what the surveillance and police states COULD become. It's also a really moving meditation on human resiliency.
I loved the way the story was told - mostly from Sara's point of view, but also meeting minutes and other types of documents between chapters. I loved how much my thoughts changed throughout. There were definitely moments were I wished Sara would behave 'better', as if that would have changed anything. I found the portrayal of cruelty for cruelty's sake really well done. I though Lalami did a fantastic job of creating suspicion between residents and yet needing to rely on each other at the same time.
The portrayal of the guards was so good, too. And the distance Sara felt from the outside world.
This was SUCH a good book, and I can't wait to read more by Lalami in the future!

In a not so distant future, technology is “helping” to curve the crime rate by picking up “criminals” before committing the actual crime they’re being retained for. It’s “not” prison, right? Through heavy monitoring, big brother is watching, even through your dreams. Subversive sci-fi at its best!

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for this digital e-arc.*

I can read horror and the nastiest thrillers and not even bat an eye...but give me a book that I think could really happen and I'll be scared to death. This book scared the shit out of me.

"In the future" you are monitored by everything. Your phone, cameras everywhere etc. You also have a number assigned to you. If you go over 500 then your likely hood of committing a crime. Mine would be over a 1000 million. You can get reported for all kinds of stuff. The main character Sara gets ticked off when they detain her on the end of a plane ride and gets sent to one of the "centers" where her likely hood of committing a crime is supposed to be evaluated.

This book is the big brother of nightmares. You can't get out if you commit the smallest of crimes. Like your hairstyle is not up to code. My hair always looks like a chicken just crawled out of it so I'd be doomed from the start. Like I said this book scared me!!! I even was talking to my husband about it last night. I told him that they implant this dream thing in their heads to make them sleep better and they watch their dreams even. He said that I was a dumbass for reading this kind of book right as they decided I need a sleep study.

Anyways. I'm going with 3 stars because the middle of the book dragged a bit and then I never really cared about the characters. I wanted them to have been a bit more fleshed out.
Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.

What do our dreams say about us, really? If the Risk Assessment Administration is correct, our dreams can be a prediction of future crimes. When Sara is stopped for extra screening after her flight home, she doesn’t understand why. Is it because of her race? Facial recognition not working? But it becomes more muddled when she’s informed that her risk score has exceeded clear limits, and it’s all due to a nightmare she had of her husband dying. Her sleep implant, invaluable in helping restore her sanity after her twins were born, has also been recording her dreams - which she allowed when she did not read the fine print. And now, her dreams have her placed in a retention center for clearance, for what is supposed to be a short 21-day sentence. It’s not a prison, they say, as these people have not actually committed a crime - yet. But 21 days turns into more when small rule infractions, government shutdowns, and other miscellaneous incidents prolong her stay.

Wow. This novel gave a very terrifying insight on how relying on technology more and more can start to unravel our future. It gives a dystopian view of the way the world can end up as we give more and more power to technology to make decisions for us - even when it may be wrong. It also shined a bright light on the way the country tries to monetize the prison system - as while the residents kept being told this wasn’t a prison, they were continually pushed to work for these private contracts that was making the holding center money. If they didn’t work, the residents were labeled as “unemployed”, which was a negative towards their risk score and indirectly prolonged their stay there. The novel also highlighted the injustice of a power imbalance where people put in these authority positions can abuse their power over their “residents” - they were subjected to the whims of the employees as they continually changed rules, allowed the residents to be experimented on, and were just generally all around terrible people just because they could be.

I had to sit with this one awhile after I finished it. It kept me completely engaged and with a complete book hangover when I was done. I just ended up having issues with some of the way things were just accepted and it felt a tad too long, otherwise this would’ve been a five star book.

Recommended if you like: dystopian novels, sci-fi, advanced technology, speculative fiction

This is a tough one to review. The scenarios in the book feel all-too-plausible especially in light of the chaos of the last 6 weeks; I just felt so much dread whenever I picked it up. But then the ending was anti-climactic and unsatisfying. 3.75 stars overall. I understand what the author was trying to do, it just didn't completely click with me.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is a scary speculative fiction novel that takes surveillance and protection to the next level.
When Sara Hussein, Ph. D is selected for an extra screening after a flight home from London, she thinks she’s being profiled. But that shouldn’t be possible, as the AI surveillance algorithm is supposed to be non-biased for data points such as race. When she’s questioned by a real human, she’s told her risk scores are too high, and she’s been flagged as potentially dangerous. These scores are supposed to predict crimes before they happen, to keep American’s safer. It’s the way of the future to prevent mass shootings, suicide and murders. Most people agree that it’s necessary. But when Sara is retained in a “not a prison” labor camp, she cannot figure out why the algorithm thinks she’s a danger to her husband. She loves her husband, doesn’t she?

This novel made me think in ways different than I ever have before. It’s scary to me because I can see this happening, all of the rhetoric and explanations make sense and I can see people giving up their anonymity to be safer. But is giving AI the reins the right way to go? Can it make decisions better than actual people? And once you’re labeled a threat, aren’t they looking for the data to prove that instead of exonerate it? I loved this book. It was so interesting and raw and real. Sara is also a mother to two small children and I could feel her hurt inside myself that she was missing them growing up. I also enjoyed the writing style, Laila Lalami is an incredible wordsmith. I do wish the ending was maybe a little different. It felt like there were many unfinished plot lines at the end that I wanted to know more about. Obviously that could have been stylistic choice, but I would have read 100 more pages of this beautiful, thoughtful book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the eARC.

This book was captivating. I loved the interspersed meeting minutes, news articles, and other pieces that added to the story. It was frustrating and scary all at the same time to read about the experiences of these women and their quest for freedom. Really well done and unlike anything I have read before.

THIS BOOK SHOULD BE ADAPTED INTO A MOVIE! While reading, I could almost see it play out on a screen. This is a dystopian novel about the government keeping track of each person and scoring them to come up with sort of a scale that measures the potential for being a criminal. It is creepy. At times while reading it I felt claustrophobic as these women try to behave in a way to decrease their "score" that they don't fully understand. It made me think of gender roles and what a society deems as "acceptable" and "not acceptable" and the pressure women are in to do it all - mother, worker, partner. A great book discussion group choice! Pick this one up. Thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy!

4.5 rounded up to 5! I was blown away by this one- from the writing, to the plot, to the cast of characters. I went into it not knowing what to expect as dystopian/sci-fi can be hit or miss for me, but I really enjoyed it. What really stood out to me was the discomfort and anger it made me feel along with Sara. In this society we live in, something like this doesn’t feel too far off. Lalami did a great job creating a group of characters to root for and making the injustices they face feel so real and drastic. My only quip was that I wanted it to be a bit longer. I felt that it would’ve benefitted the reader by spending a bit more time with Sara after the final twist at the end. Sitting with Sara and her feelings on this new development would’ve really solidified the resolution to me. But overall, this was really hard-hitting and beautifully written.