3 / 5 stars: Good, with flaws.

I found the first 75% of this near-future speculative fiction novel very compelling. We follow a fairly ordinary woman, Sara, who winds up "retained" in a facility due to having a high score predicting risk of future violence. This risk score is generated from the wealth of data collected from her social media, phone use, public surveillance, smart home integrated objects, and, most recently, brain implant intended to regulate her sleep. The company that made the implant has sold her dream data to the company generating risk scores and she has just met the threshold to be determined high-risk.

The narrative centers around her incarceration and the impossibility of lowering her score in a facility that constantly surveills her dreams, conversations, moods, and facial expressions and staffed by individuals incentivized to keep her there. The baked-in bias of predictive algorithms, capitalist corruption of public services including public safety, unquenchable data greed of AI, and the inescapability of modern surveillance are well-explored themes in the novel. The epistolary elements also work well. So do the dreams.

While I had a great time most of the way through, the plot lost focus and the ending was unsatisfying. Maybe that's the point - there is no good ending here - but there were some narrative threads that I felt were left hanging. A major character reveal about halfway through, Sara's marital tension, and the enduring consequences of rentention all could have used more attention in the end. Also, as a person in science, I cringed very hard when characters discussed linear regressions and "p-levels"; at this level of big data analysis, I doubt sincerely they'd be using a linear regression model and also we call them p-values.

Thanks NetGalley for the free eARC in exchange for my honest review.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is a chilling and thought-provoking novel that explores the dangers of unchecked surveillance in a future where AI dictates our lives. In this dystopian world, Sara Hussein finds herself trapped in a nightmarish system that misinterprets her words and dreams as threats. Lalami masterfully crafts a believable and terrifying vision of a future where privacy is eroded and individual freedoms are crushed. This is a must-read for fans of speculative fiction and anyone concerned about the potential misuse of technology.

Impressive. I’ve read this author before. She’s always interesting and this novel seemed timely and chilling. Surveillance capitalism has arrived and the novel does a good job of considering it, and contextualizing it. The privatization of prisons, the exploitation of prisoners - and the general public - and our vulnerability to algorithms and private enterprise are depicted clearly and powerfully.
I’m not sure I accept the ending. Would Sara really be rewarded for disruption? But I could see a conclusion was required. That’s a quibble, however.
Another good job by a sensitive and perceptive writer.

I really liked the idea behind this book but couldn’t get into it! I DNF’d after ~45%. I really tried, but I couldn’t connect with the characters and it felt like it was dragging on and on and on… it really felt like after hours of reading, nothing actually happened.

I devoured this book in less than 48 hours! 😱 It was absolutely addictive. The story follows a new mother who gets detained due to AI, with what was supposed to be a 21-day stay turning into over 200.

I’ve been diving into AI-related topics lately, so the whole AI vs government and privacy angle had me hooked from the start! While it was a bit predictable at times, the writing was brilliant. Major props to the author for showcasing just how reliant we are on technology and how quickly it can turn on us.

This book terrified me, yet I loved it. Set in the future, so very believable, it brings to life the scary and slippery slope of today’s technology. It took me a long time to get through, as I had my comparatively minor life stresses show up that made it nearly impossible to read. Yet, there was Sara, going through her horrific ordeal. Layla I beautifully captures the emotional roller coaster of both detainment and finally freedom and the beauty/brutality of relationships in both. The scariest part for me is I can totally see this happening in our near future. The fire scene and evacuation were happening in LA area as I read the galley. Remarkable writing, remarkable story. Well done.

I absolutely devoured this book. Definitely one of my favorite sci-fi books I've read in the past couple of years. The risks of corporate greed and the privatization of prisons and other institutions is taken to a whole new level in this book. At first, it felt like shades of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, but it evolved into something more akin to 1984 by George Orwell. While reading, I vacillated between being extremely unsettled and frustrated, to being curious and hopeful.

Sara starts out at Madison detention center under a 21 day hold due to a high risk score for potential violence generated by an algorithm that calculated things like her driving habits, phone and internet usage, and dreams. This detention is legal and used under the guise of safety to the community to prevent future harms a person MAY commit. Once at Madison, it becomes clear that it is extremely rare for anyone to get out in 21 days, especially considering that dreams are considered in your risk factor analysis and if not improved, your stay is lengthened. Then, a new visitor comes in and an even more sinister picture starts taking shape.

Personally, I really enjoyed that the chapters were punctuated by emails, interoffice memos, and retention center protocols. It created a necessary interlude between each chapter and added background for the upcoming chapter without having to include a lot of text to get a deeper understanding of the situation.

I wished that we learned more about the person who infiltrated Madison and the corporation behind this sinister operation, but I don't feel like that took anything away from the book - it just left me wanting more.

I felt like learning Sara's backstory was extremely important to the book and very well done. The trauma she experienced in early childhood and her upbringing added to the depth of the her character and how she moved through the world as the daughter of immigrants and as a woman - and finding her own way in the process. It also made the ending all the more satisfying.

I wish Sara were real - I'd love to keep up with her future endeavors as a badass woman.

This novel is gonna HIT when it’s released in March. It’s discomforting and timely without feeling like it’s banging you over the head with the point. A piece of character driven speculative fiction, The Dream Hotel follows Sara, a working mother of infant twins who begrudgingly installs a dream recording sleep aid so she can get some rest. Unbeknownst to her, the algorithm of her dreams and minutiae of her life has declared that she’s at risk of committing a crime.

A lot of fiction that brings in reliance on technology, surveillance, and algorithms can veer too on the nose, but Lalami crafts a world that’s familiar rather than identical. Dream sequences, which can often be a cheap betrayal of the reader, are creatively woven into the narrative. The way friendships developed amongst the incarcerated women was a grounding, uplifting light that I enjoyed throughout.

This wasn’t a book I could read for long periods of time, as the banality of the institute started to wear on me as a reader, too. There’s a quick veer in the story that while important, felt a little thrown in without smoothing the edges. It shines in its character studies with most supporting characters being well fleshed out and important pieces of this small world.

I’m really looking forward to the discussions this book invites - when will our self imposed panopticon turn on us?

I really enjoyed this book!! The premise was really up my alley. I love dystopian feminism fiction so this was a hit for me! The author created scenes that I could really see in my head and pulled me right in. While I liked the overall premise, there were a few scenes that fell flat for me in a sense that I wish they lasted longer or were elaborated on more. Overall, I had a ton of fun with this book and would highly recommend!

Laila Lalami’s DREAM HOTEL is deeply unsettling. Set in the near future, the book builds on technology and attitudes already imaginable.

Sara Hussein is a likable, likely protagonist, one easy to identify with. To deal with stresses normal after the birth of twins in the midst of a busy career and life, she gets a Dreamsaver inserted, a brain implant that allows her to sleep at the cost of adding her dreams to a government database. The government hands over this surveillance data to private contractors with the goal of identifying crimes BEFORE they are committed. The so-called Risk Assessment Administration, RAA (of course acronyms and double-speak abound), identify Sara as a potential murderer, based on her dreams, a quite innocent past, some short-tempered responses, and undoubtedly her surname. Once a person is caught in this “protective” system, it is difficult to regain freedom.

She grows a lot during her time at Safe-X run, Madison. Not a prison, they tell her, a house of preventive detention. After a while, she is no longer like the new guests who “cling to the belief that the system works, despite its shocking flaws.” She realizes the algorithm finds what it needs within the complex human experience to justify any charge. Eventually, she decides to invest in the value of friendship and combined effort, rather than self-protective isolation.

No dream; it’s a nightmare!

With thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I received the ARC from the publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This was quite a ride. The story line is intense from the start and sucks you in. The thought of what life would be like and dealing with what Sara experienced is terrifying. The story did have slow parts at points but it would pick up again quickly. Overall I enjoyed the read.

An A++ dystopian novel where predictive scores mean that oh hey, you can be held at will and subjected to a kafkaesque nightmare because an algorithm has decided there's a chance of you killing your husband based on your dreams (that you gave a tech company access to). A slow but steady unraveling of a woman against systemic bullshit on all fronts, and what happens when she finally decides to do something about it. Comes out this spring, and definitely worth your time.

It took me a really long time to finish The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami. I absolutely adored the concept of this book. Agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull Sara aside after a trip abroad for work and detain her after her Risk score is too high. She is transferred to a retention center to bring down her Risk/dream score. The government uses dreams and information technology to create scores on human beings and try to prevent crime from happening. I wanted to read this book as I can see this dystopian world somehow becoming real with the evolution of technology. Unfortunately I did not connect to the main character which left me not invested in the story as much as I wanted to be. She felt very immature and reckless especially with the author trying to convey to the reader that she wanted to get out for her husband and kids. I wish this book was faster paced and unputdownable.

4.5 just cause it's so horrifying! This is a combo of Minority Report and Good Mother's that showcases the banality of evil. A woman is caught in a web of bureaucracy and "procedures", deprived of her rights and freedom despite never having committed a crime. She was profiled as potential to commit a crime based on AI algorithms from all the data gathered she consented to. This book will make you think twice about consenting to every app you get. It also shows how evil can hide behind paperwork, rules and procedures. Highly recommend but with the concession that it is a hard read.

This book is a little too realistic. Set in a world where algorithms know everything about us, including mining dreams for data from a device marketed to help people sleep. A stressful life situation could manifest in an upsetting dream that lands you into a detention center "for observation." It's not a prison, but has plenty of similarities. Words and explanations mean nothing--the data doesn't lie. Sara is a sympathetic character, and I was really invested in her story, hoping she would be able to be released but also not seeing how it could be possible, with the way the center worked, where every tiny infraction incurs more time, the bureaucracy of the hearings, and of course the dream data that is never ending.

If I am being honest, I'm having some difficulty processing this book, but that is precisely the point. Completely engrossing, top notch writing, and masterful, this book is not so much dystopian as it is utterly timely and terrifying. The scenarios described here are not unthinkable. In fact, what makes this book unsettling is how easy it is to see this happening. The main character, Sara, is sent to a "retention facility" because she has been evaluated as having elevated pre-crime tendencies. No, she hasn't committed a crime but the government (yes, this is all sanctioned) has determined that she presents a risk for a FUTURE crime. This sounds a lot like Minority Report, but it doesn't have the same sensibility. The world created by Lalami, and the circumstances that lead to Sara's detention, are completely believable. This is about data mining and the control. we have ceded to tech companies. It's about bureaucracy and the ways in which terrible decisions are justified by governments {ahem}. It's about government itself and the constant overreach.

This one will haunt me for a while.

Deeply unsettling speculative fiction. I had a hard time reading, tbh.

The ending felt somewhat anticlimactic; however, I think that's the point. In a dystopian bureaucracy, the tragedy of one person's situation is just another part of the bureaucracy.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

At what point does protective surveillance become facistic? Sara Hussein finds herself in a nightmare version of custody due to unfortunate interpretation of her answers to interrogations on return from a business trip, and misreading of dreams. In a future delineated by the dictates of a soulless algorithm, the landscape she inhabits has all the "...beauty and joy wrung out of (life)l." Her complicated relationship with her husband and their normal stresses as parents of twins is mined for evidence used against her, so much so that infractions are classified as crimes as opposed to expected reactions. What Lalami has done here is make believable the possible future impact of a world increasingly dictated by AI and its possible misuse by humans. "The algorithm knows so much about her already, going all the way down to the nucleic acids that twist in a helix inside her cells." Her longing for the small joys of life and home have led to an appreciation for all she'd gradually taken for granted. A real page turner that in today's scary landscape could become all too real.

The Dream Hotel is Lalami's latest masterpiece. Like other outstanding dystopian fiction, it's set in a world that is all too real, relying on all-too-possible technology and policies. Sara, an art historian, is stopped by security on her way home from a conference in London, and falsely imprisoned with other women in a jail that was once a school. Their crimes are uncommitted, but based on neurological implants, an algorithm designed to create enslaved labor flags them as potentially dangerous--based on their dreams. It's a horrifying story, especially on the heels of announcements of Neuralink implants and unceasing, un critical media coverage of the second Trump inauguration. It's a must-read, even for those who already know the dangers of what's happening in the US and other nations. The characters are real and compelling, and the scenarios all too plausible. It's a warning: we should heed it.

Wow. I finished this book a few days ago and had to take time to fully process everything. Excellent writing. It’s not extremely difficult to imagine this sort of world in our not-so-distant future. Sara’s retention was entirely the result of a man feeling slighted by her. That alone is far too similar to real life. This book reminded me of the dystopian world created by John Marrs in several of his books. Great read!