A terrifyingly prescient novel. It’s the near future one too close for comfort. Engaging and thought provoking while still being entertaining fiction, for now. Parts of the book felt episodic in a detached way but one that I think ultimately added to the uncanny feeling of the reality imagined in this story.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The Dream Hotel seems so futuristic and both modern day at the same time. Sara Hussein is returning home from a conference when she is detained at the airport, supposedly at risk of committing a crime in the near future. Sara has seemingly done nothing wrong. But in a world where people’s every moves and even dreams are tracked, any little thing can raise someone’s risk score. The retention facility where she is held is not a prison, though the retainees are more or less treated as prisoners.
I found this to be a sobering take on the world around us, how technology can control us, and how small acts of resistance can actually make a difference. Very well written with compelling characters and a (unfortunately) believable plot.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for access to this ARC.

As an immigration attorney who works with clients detained in ICE detention--I genuinely had to stop and catch my breath a few times. The way this book captured the horrors of civil detention was startling accurate. I will definitely be recommending this on my socials!

3 💫

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me access to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I found the premise of this book to be quite interesting. It’s easy to see a world in which the government oversteps with functions that attempt to assist with the precognition of criminal attempts however unfounded this may be.

It’s a bit tightening, to say the least.

The chips that were implanted for insomnia and related issues is being used to categorize & institutionalize criminals that will commit crimes in advance. The only problem is some ppl may be dreaming about crimes they will never commit.

I enjoyed this book (and was a bit frightened bc it’s so close to home) because it urged you to think outside our current situation and explore where the govt over-reach could go.

What a thought-provoking novel, please give this one a read, it is hauntingly accurate of a future way too close to us. Don’t let anyone dictate our dreams and have access to our subconscious, the one great thing we have left that can’t be breached and used against us legally.

Laila Lalami does a great job of exploring the meaning behind our choices and our very moral core. I could feel Sara’s paranoia mounting and wanted so badly for her to find a release to the torture she has needlessly been put through. This was absolutely a life changing book and will haunt me in the back of my head for years to come.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

This futuristic story ought to scare you. Parallels to our world today are just a step away from this being our own stories. We carelessly turn over all our privacy to our “smart” devices, which leaves us with our lives exposed and open to bad possible outcomes by those we are supposed to trust.

This original, well written tale grabs on and doesn’t let go. Sara Hussein gets caught up in a web she cannot get out of. A misunderstanding leads to her being held in a lockup for most of a year, leaving behind a husband and young twins. The author creates many believable bureaucratic messes, and well developed characters who suffer along with Sara.

Hang on as you run the possibilities of this being a real thing in our not so distant futures. A well deserved five stars from this reviewer, and don’t say you weren’t warned!

4.25 ⭐️This book had Minority Report vibes all over it. I was super interested in this premise.

The MC gets a sleep aid implanted because she’s struggling with sleeping and it’s having an effect on her mental and physical health and her relationship with her husband and with being a mother. So she signs the contract, doesn’t read the detailed fine print, gets this thing implanted in her head, only to find out later that the company has every right to do what they want with the data they collect They sell this information to the government which in-turn allows them to analyze the dreams in any way they see fit. A dream they see makes them believe she is a danger to her husband justifying detaining her for a minimum of 21 days. Taking her away from her family, her husband, her employment, everything. In this futuristic world people are given risk scores kind of like credit scores, but these scores determine how much of a risk to society they could potentially be; the higher your score, the less likely it is you will get out of this detention center. Mind you, it is not a prison. This fact is pointed out several times throughout the book. While she is detained, she is expected to follow extremely strict rules, she lives in a cell, she is surrounded by officers, has no real rights, and is pretty much treated like a prisoner even though, again, it is not a prison. At some point, she realizes that she has an opportunity to “stand up to the man” and revolt and she tries to get people to join her.

Overall, I did enjoy the writing. I thought the whole style and set up of the book was actually quite awesome. In between chapters there’s different types of correspondence and news articles, office memos, that give you some background information about what’s going on. I really enjoy mixed media like that in a book. I also enjoyed the characters, although some of the side characters were hard to distinguish. The author did do an excellent job of adding nuances to the MC’s narrative to show her growth and transformation throughout the story.

My only other complaint is that I felt like it kind of dragged on without really adding anything to the story towards the end. I mean, I had 10% left in the book and still didn’t see where the story was going to go and how it was going to end up. And then the end that the author wrote seemed either lazy and rushed or like the author was leaving it open for a sequel (even though this doesn’t seem like a book with a sequel).

I will tell you that this book made me feel a lot of strong emotions. The injustice and unfairness of it all, the judging and condemning of people for things that might happen (guilty until proven innocent?), targeting a group of people who are desperate for help in order to invade their privacy in ways that are just unimaginable. I was very anxious and angry and frustrated through most of this book which is in no way a complaint. I believe, bottom line, this book did what it set out to do. The ending just really didn’t work for me.

***Thank you NetGalley, Laila Lalami, and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.***

Wow, what a beautifully written work! This is a sci-fi/dystiopian-ish novel centered around surveillance & safety risks. I felt such heavy anxiety making my way through this book, imaging this all happening to me. The MC was a little irritating at times, however her character was so well developed and created. I wish we got a clearer look into her home life and marriage, though. The book was also slightly too long and the ending just didn't have enough *umph* for me, but the building story was so wonderful.

Trippy, infuriating, and entirely plausible. It felt like reading a dream…and it makes you think about how impressive and scary it is that, in order to obtain better technology that helps improve our lives, we are willing to ignore all the ways tech companies and the government will use it to screw us over.

4.25 stars

This whole book had me questioning what was real and feeling like someone was watching me. This book felt very dystopian, Black Mirror, 1984 vibes yet also felt like a very real possibility for the not so distant future. It’s not hard to imagine companies or the government tracking us through technology and using that to make decisions on our futures.
This book was so unsettling, with even peoples’ dreams being monitored and used against them. I had a hard time differentiating between the dreams and real world which left me feeling anxious and confused about what was actually happening.
This book also seemed to be about race in America, where people of color are targeted unfairly with arbitrary rules that make no sense. Again, while feeling very dystopian it also felt very realistic.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC!!

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is a third person-POV speculative literary novel exploring dreams and indefinite detainment. When Sara is stopped from reuniting with her family after a work trip due to a slight spike in her Risk Assessment Score, she is held with other women who are hoping for a chance to finally go home. But everything Sara does seem to be an excuse to add yet more time to her mandatory 90 days and bleed her and her family dry.

This read to me like an episode of Black Mirror, hyper-focused on a very specific but very real possibility in our future (Risk Assessment Scores) or a more literary version of the Minority Report. The concept of good citizen scores and trying to stop crimes before they happen is not new but Laila Lalami’s spin on it is the prison-like setting and the promise that there is a possibility for the women to leave and yet the system is trying to keep them right where they are. PostPal, which acts as a go-between for the women inside and their families and lawyers outside, bleeds these women and their loved ones dry, racking up more and more debt the longer the women are there. There’s no actual benefit to let the women go; the system only gains from keeping them prisoners.

The dreams are spliced occasionally into the narrative and, at first, seem like part of Sara’s daily life or something from her past, until she wakes up or she acknowledges that it is a dream. By giving a company access to her dreams in order to sleep better, she basically agreed to allow this company to monitor her dreams anything that could increase her Score and the wardens of her unit are even aware of how these dreams play out in a violation of privacy that is never acknowledged by the system itself. Dreams themselves are used as a reason to deem someone a threat to others instead of possibly being related to stress or trauma. In a time when it seems like people are eager to legalize thought crimes, this does make the work feel timely.

Content warning for mentions of sexual assault

I would recommend this to fans of Black Mirror, readers looking for a deeper exploration of the technology in Minority Report, and those looking for a literary novel focused on imprisonment based on good citizenship scores

I requested this book from NetGalley because the synopsis sounded like it would fit right in on a season of Black Mirror. It's very Minority-Report-y, where people are retained due to their dreams and other factors that are being surveilled by an algorithm (there are over 200 sources of data it looks at, we're told several times) that is looking for people who are at high risk for committing a violent crime in the future. There is a lot packed into this, including critiquing for-profit prisons, the commodification of our data that we "agree" to in exchange for devices that make our lives easier, racial profiling, the abuses of the discretion of police and other people in authority, etc.

I did wish that it leaned into the dreams surveillance a little more, in order to give it more of a near future vibe. Without this aspect, it isn't near future as much as it is things that could happen here and now with the technology that we have and the devices and digital services that people use. There is a storyline involving an employee of the dream software company conducting product update tests on the retainees without their knowledge, and that wasn't fleshed out as much as it could have been or taken to a conclusion, it felt like a little snippet to demonstrate possible consequences of this universe, but I would have liked to have seen the author lean way more into this plotline.

Overall, this is a really well written book that made me feel a lot of feelings, as I spent a lot of time being frustrated with the main character and the people around her while also knowing the futility of her acting any differently because of her impossible situation.

What would you be willing to risk in order to sleep well?

In the near future, the American government creates the Crime Prevention Act in order to prevent future crimes and murders. The Risk Assessment Administration has been monitoring citizens for twenty years, determining if they are at risk to cause harm to others. With the help of the new Dreamsaver device, not only will people be able to be well rested in a short period of time, but the government will track their dreams.

When new mom of twins Sara Hussein is returning home from a work trip abroad, she is flagged at the airport as a risk by government agents. Her risk assessment score has risen above 500 and therefore deemed a threat. She learns that her new Dreamsaver device has elevated her score due to her violent behavior in her dreams and is considered a high risk to kill her own husband! She purchased a Dreamsaver because she wanted to be able to sleep less and be more productive during the day as a working new mom. She is retained at Madison, a forensic observation facility for 21 days.

When 21 days turns into almost a year, Sara must figure out how to break free from a system that is stacked against her.

The premise of this book reminds me of Minority Report…only minus Tom Cruise and ALL of the action! It is labeled as a thriller on Goodreads, but is definitely lacking all thrills! The theme of the human cost of technical surveillance is explored as well as racism and immigration. I found the book to be repetitive, extremely slow, and better suited to the literary fiction genre.

The plot is very intriguing, but I was expecting way more from the ending. I feel like I’ve been duped by this Pulitzer Prize finalist and am very disappointed.

2.5/5 stars rounded up

Expected publication date: 3/4/25

Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon publishing for the ARC of The Dream Hotel in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, such a fascinating premise. The best dystopian books take things that are happening in our real world, and just push things that little bit further. The way we can actually imagine how we get from our world to the one inhabited by the book. Happily, this book was that. It reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale in that way. However, unfortunately for me, the writing wasn't that compelling. I struggled to get through the book, and it was all a bit repetitive. I absolutely love the idea of it, but I'm sad I didn't enjoy the actual story more.

A well-told nightmare about potential effects of invasive technology on real people
When Sara lands at the Los Angeles airport returning from a business conference, she expects to be greeted by her husband and her twin son and daughter. Instead, an agent from the federal Risk Assessment Administration (RAA) takes her aside and tells her they are going to take her into custody for twenty-one days (and maybe longer) while they weigh evidence that she is likely to commit a violent crime.
Although the RAA uses a lot of data about Sara’s past, the big source that has led to the creation of the RAA is the Dreamsaver, a neural implant to help people sleep. It has been improved to the point that it can actually interpret people’s dreams, and this information is used to tag potential criminals.
Although the basis for the story stems from the dual threats from government authorities that invade personal privacy to a degree beyond anything in place today and the technology that allows them to collect and analyze everyone’s data, The Dream Hotel tells the personal stories of Sara and the women she meets as they struggle to regain their freedom.
This is first and foremost a story about people, and Laila Lalami’s prizewinning writing skills make it an enthralling read. My Kindle is full of paragraphs I highlighted simply for the quality of the writing, such as Sara’s interaction with her little daughter who visits her while she is confined. There are believable portrayals of Sara and her family and of the other women who are confined with her; it made me wonder how I would cope in such a situation. In addition to the the overall theme of the confinements, there are some good plot details that kept me interested along the way.
I keep seeing the book described as “science fiction”, however, and I want to warn that this is likely to raise the wrong expectations. The setting is obviously near future, and technology that can read and interpret our dreams is NOT likely any time in the near future. This lack of credibility rather spoiled my pleasure in the book until I became immersed in the story. Then I remembered Wells’s Law, formulated by science fiction pioneer H. G. Wells, which says that a science fiction or fantasy story should contain at most one impossible assumption. If Wells allows it, I guess I will go along!
If you keep Wells’ Law in mind, there is a lot of reading pleasure and also a lot of food for thought in The Dream Hotel.
I received an advance review copy of this book from Net Galley and Pantheon Books.

The Dream Hotel is a dystopian novel about a woman who is detained by a new government agency because she had a dream in which she is responsible for her husband's death and has been deemed a risk. How do they know about the content of her dreams? Because Sara, a new mom, had a device implanted in her head that was supposed to help her sleep more efficiently and feel refreshed upon waking.

Once at the facility her every action is scrutinized and the slightest misstep is used as an excuse to keep her longer. Part-Phillip K. Dick, part-Kafka, and all Lalami. The writing feels real and urgent, and the characters acutely drawn.

This was a well-written and extremely thought provoking book. It invites the reader to explore themes of oppression, discomfort, surveillance state, and abuse of power. There is the obvious call to consider the moral applications and limits of tech as we bound into the future, but also distinct echos from past systematic abuses - particularly towards women (locking up "hysterical" women, lobotomizing, etc). Perhaps the most immediately relevant (unfortunately) question posed to the audience is: how much control over a person/woman's autonomy and body is acceptable and to what end? Laila Lalami does a good job forcing you to feel the unsettling consequences of allowing liberties to be exchanged for a hypothetical greater good in the hands of nebulous groups with questionable aims - or even truly well-meaning groups for that matter! Recommend. It's not always fast paced or fun exactly, but its a great read, especially in this climate.

This book was a trip! One that I took slow at first, and then fast when I was about 60% through. At times, especially towards the end, the story felt so hopeless! It was a bleak, very well written, miserable novel. But the ending...it was everything an ending should be. I loved it! However one small complaint, I couldn't keep track of the dates and times and that bothered me. But it didn't keep me from enjoying the story. It was obviously written by a very talented author. I keep thinking about one passage from the book, it's towards the end and I can't quote it but the author expressed Sara's feelings in such a way that I feel that they're my feelings as well. Thank you NetGalley for the advance copy!

This book was disturbing, uncomfortable, challenging, and brilliant. It reminded me, in a way, of how I felt when I read THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS. But this novel is so much more than a dystopian thriller. Lalami presents a terrifying meditation on personal autonomy and what the world might look like in a world with too much technological surveillance and limited privacy. This was a book I wanted to come back to, time and time again, and a story that could very easily become a haunting reality. I will be thinking about this book for quite some time. What a masterful blend of psychological thriller and social commentary. Thank you NetGalley for the early copy.

I really enjoyed this book! I reminded me of A School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, it feels like they could be set in the same not-so-distant future where Big Brother is definitely watching your every move. I was really impressed with the writing style, I felt like it sucked me and I was in the same setting with our main character. It feels like a timely book for every reader and not only is it enjoyable but it will make you think about how society is moving forward…or backward.
I did feel that the ending fell a bit flat for me and I don’t feel I can say much more than that without spoilers, but overall I did REALLY enjoy this book!