How do you love a book that is so dystopian, so creepily real, so scary? I was raging through all of it for these women. Mirrors too much of today's political climate, especially concerning women and immigrants. This "Retention Center" if it really wanted to help would offer counseling, therapy, etc. But as we all know, government facilities don't actually want to help solve problems, they want to make money off of people. Whether government or privately owned, prisons or "retention" centers aren't there to help, they are there to profit.
This book is one big "sliding doors" moment. If someone has the capacity to hurt someone else, that doesn't necessarily mean they will. There is always a possibility of violence, especially in today's landscape ranging from desperate people trying to save their families or red-pilled incels looking for revenge. This book wouldn't have been complete without an Octavia Butler reference so love that for her.
By a little past the middle of the book, i figured out they were implanting the dreams. Like everyone knows, profit over people.
Sara is amazing for not giving into Hinton. She had the consideration- the good of the many before herself- and that got her out of the center. I would love a sequel about Sara demonstrating and getting into congress to demolish the retention centers.
The women in the retention centers were inspiring. They are the perfect examples of necessity or creativity in this matter, is the more of invention. And I'm hoping that in this hellish fascist regime we are living through, that like those women in the retention center, beautiful art will be born of this time. But I still hope it is short lived fascism either way.

There was a lot to like about this book, with a lot of commentary on the future of algorithms and the prison-industrial complex.

"'You're not every woman.'
What a bizarre thing to say. Is she expected to behave exactly the same as every other woman in their database, or else she'll arouse suspicions? She is Sara Tilila Hussein. She's never pretended or even wanted to be anyone else.
Bu that is the trouble. The merchants of data who've spent decades building a taxonomy of human behavior find outliers troublesome. By definition outliers aren't predictable, which also means they're not profitable. Soon, their actions become aberrant, their ideas peculiar, their lives transgressive: they are delinquents."

3.5 rounded up. I think this probably could've been edited down (especially the unnecessary middle POV change that spoiled the reveal and added confusion to the themes already being developed). That being said, I was never bored even though not a lot happened. I've stumbled upon a lot of dystopian fiction lately, and this one does a great job of building tension and helplessness. Truly scary what-if questions explored here.

This released earlier this month, but I still wanted to thank NetGalley and the publishers for the early copy (my reading just got behind)!

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I am not a huge Sci Fi reader but I absolutely loved this book and was sucked into the storyline immediately. Set sometime in the near future it felt so real, which made it somewhat terrifying to think these things could actually happen. This is definitely the kind of story that makes you go…hmmm! I would absolutely recommend this book to my fellow reading friends as a “must read”!

This dystopian read from Laila Lalami is frightening in how easily it can be believed to be integrated into the near future. It's a modern 1984, where Big Brother is always watching and all of your actions are scored to determine your worth or threat to society. When Sara Hussein's score exceeds 500, she is taken into custody by TSA on her return flight from London and sent to a detention center.

Defined as "not a prison", but instead a "holding" location, there are many excuses for why it is not against Sara's rights to hold her without charging her with an actual crime. The parallels to profiling and detention of immigrants and others of ethnic backgrounds are plainly obvious. Current events only heightened my apprehension at the actions that were occurring in the narrative. The potential realism is very powerful in generating intrigue for the plot.

The writing is fantastic and there are many issues approached and handled throughout the narrative that make things feel absolutely plausible. The tension between guards and detainees feels real and the mind games for both the characters and the readers themselves are very skillfully crafted. There was a definite hook.

So why not a 5-star read? Well...while the concept is intriguing and the execution paints a good picture of the possible ways this approach could go drastically wrong for innocent individuals, there were issues with pacing and with character construction. The plot felt occasionally repetitive and the pacing sometimes dragged a bit, making it feel like I was stuck in a deja vu situation for chapters at a time. This does serve to reinforce some of the trapped and helpless feeling of the situation, but distracted me from the overall movement of the narrative.

As far as the characters go, somehow they just felt flat to me. There wasn't a lot of dimension to them and I really didn't form a deep attachment to their particular well-being. The situation was gripping, but the individual story didn't shine.

Lastly, if you know anything about me, endings are a very important part of my rating decision. They can make or break a book. In this case, there were both good and bad things. Good: there was some resolution of the situation and I definitely got the PTSD feeling of the situation. There was a good message there. Bad: it felt like the plot just dropped out. There wasn't a firm conclusion and everything was just left floating mid-action. I get the intent, but it was super frustrating as a reader.

Summary? Good read. Well worth the time. I can absolutely see merit in its nomination for literary awards. Not a perfect read and it did require a bit of patience, but excellent concept and really well considered by the author. She's an author I would read again.

Woah! That was....terrifying!
This anxiety-inducing dystopian novel of a near-future society where people's behaviors are scaled based on what they do privately, even while sleeping, was messed up! Cameras are everywhere - basically how they are now - but this is surveillance taken to a new level. Yes, we can agree that technology makes tracking criminals easier. Great! But imagine if even your dreams could be criminalized. A unit of the government monitors your dreams and punishes people before they commit a crime based on an algorithm that analyzes your subconscious. These dreams are monitored and recorded to be used by the government however they want.

Our main character, Sarah, voluntarily has a device implanted to help her with insomnia. She didn't exactly read the fine print, which states that anyone can be held accountable for their dreams.

Sarah is detained at LAX airport on her way home to her husband and twin babies after a work conference in London. After being told her score is over 500, she is detained and sent to a detention center for a mandatory three-week hold. This facility for women is a nightmare, and Sarah's stay keeps getting extended at the whim of cruel guards who unjustly penalize detainees for any infraction they see fit.

Through grit and resilience, Sarah follows all the rules. Ridiculous inhumane rules. No matter that she is a model detainee, she still gets punished. Her appeals get denied, and she is stuck and at the mercy of a guard named Hinton, who is out to get her. Hinton is another power-hungry man with no real power, so he takes it where he can get it in the hopeless, beaten women of the facility. With no other choice, Sarah goes on strike and breaks all the rules in the hope of getting out one way or another as she grows more desperate and disparate.

This chilling book takes on the serious topic of surveillance and privacy and turns it on its head. Some parts mirror our current climate, where innocent people are held against their will for just being who they are.

This edgy, bleak, original thriller will stay with me in the way it explores the multitude of ways our data is compiled and used against us all. I hope this is not a glimpse into the future of techno mankind.

A modern ‘big brother is watching’, which continues to be on the forefront of our minds as new technologies emerge. Are they created to keep us safe or track us? In this story, technology is used to prevent crimes from happening by using algorithms tracking a person’s behavior, past experiences, communication and even dream analysis. But what happens when all the data creates an untrue narrative? How does justice prevail? The story follows Sarah, a mother and wife, as she is detained after traveling to London. Her stay at Madison, which proclaims to be a site for detainees as they await trial is more prison-like. Sarah must make choices different than her previous life, especially as the administration continues to change rules and policies. The book centers around Sarah’s experiences at Madison, and we are left somewhat in the dark as to how Sarah reacclimatizes to her previous life. Will she go off the grid? Will she save her friends back at Madison? The story could lead to a sequel, but I would have preferred for more story after her release, and less story during her stay at Madison, as some of it seemed redundant.

The Dream Hotel is just as good as everyone made it out to be-- a speculative exploration of rights and property to information, the prison-industrial complex, and methods of resistance. Sara was a compelling protagonist and I loved her shifting relationships with the other women at Madison. this book was deftly executed and I can see a lot of value in including this on a dystopian/speculative syllabus, or a gender/women's studies syllabus. all in all, this was a 4.5/5 star read for me, mainly because the ending wrapped up too quickly and I wished there had been more fallout from the Julie/Eisley revelation, but it was a read that will stick with me, unfortunately because of its all too prescient content.

In *The Dream Hotel*, Laila Lalami tells a gripping story about surveillance, technology, and human resilience through the eyes of Sara Hussein, a scientist detained at LAX after an algorithm flags her as a threat. Set in a near-future world where technology criminalizes subconscious thoughts, the novel explores the impact of systemic injustice, focusing on how marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by technological surveillance. Lalami's evocative prose creates a tense, thought-provoking narrative that challenges readers to reflect on the erosion of privacy and autonomy in an increasingly algorithmic society.

Sara has just returned from a trip abroad when she is detained at the airport by agents of the Risk Assessment Administration (RAA) I cannot imagine how frustrating this would be when all you want to do is see your family and relax in the comfort of your own home. They unfairly pull her aside based on her dream information. Hello, dreams are wonky and quite unreliable, with no way to control them - how very scary this would be! The RAA tells Sara she is at risk of committing a future crime so she must be kept under observation for 21 days, and they take her away. 'Observation' isn't prison, but it is similar to it, and the 21 days soon turns into months for Sara. The time spent at Madison is full of frustration. There are jobs to do and many rules to obey lest your risk score take a hit. Sara needs her risk score to drop before she will be considered for release back to her home. The Dream Hotel is set in the future and is quite scary as it seems like a scenario that could easily happen. The book is told entirely from Sara's POV with some mixed media inserted for context - emails, reports. and also Sara's dreams. The dreams helped put me into the world at Madison as I was never quite sure what was real and what wasn't.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Imagine a world where your dreams aren’t just personal reflections but potential evidence against you. Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel thrusts us into a near-future dystopia where the boundary between thought and crime blurs alarmingly.

The story centers on Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American historian and mother, who is abruptly detained upon returning to Los Angeles from a conference. Unbeknownst to her, a sleep device she used to combat insomnia has been monitoring her dreams. The authorities, relying on data from this device, accuse her of harboring subconscious intentions of harming her husband. This lands her in a “retention center,” a euphemism for a prison where individuals are held not for crimes committed, but for crimes the government predicts they might commit based on invasive surveillance.

Lalami masterfully crafts a narrative that is both unsettling and thought-provoking. The novel delves deep into themes of privacy invasion, the perils of unchecked technological advancements, and the erosion of civil liberties. Sara’s journey is a poignant exploration of resilience and the human spirit’s fight against oppressive systems.

The Dream Hotel serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences when society prioritizes security over individual freedoms. It’s a compelling read that challenges us to reflect on our current trajectory in the age of surveillance capitalism.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!!

What if nothing was sacred or safe from capitalism and public scrutinity?—Not even your dreams. In the world of this haunting novel, individuals are heavily policed and even incarcerated for the random bursts of stimuli the synapses firing in their heads produce. What we would deem random images and the narratives we create upon waking to make sense of them, this near-future reality decries as confessions of intent.

We follow a woman named Sara T Hussein so desperate to sleep following the birth of her child, that she tries out a new experimental sleep product. Failing to read the Terms and Conditions, she's arrested for intentions to commit murder... against her partner... due to her literal <i>dreams</i>. Far-fetched yet still hauntingly close to our own surveillance state, Sara is sent to a compound with a myriad of other women in similar circumstances.

Expected to spend a brief stint before being returned to their lives on the outside; these women are continuously held for petty slights and grievances, from at times seemingly inconsequential acts. With every slip up, the women's timers are reset, thus dragging their sentences out even longer. While the location within which they're housed isn't a literal prison, the Madison certainly operates in the same manner.

Masterfully blending the shifting expectations of the patriarchy and stigma of incarceration—upon those attempting to return to the general populous—with the horrors of our rapidly shifting technological landscape, this novel takes readers on quite the ride. An utterly infuriating novel that doesn't shy away from how interconnected various sectors are with the prison industrial complex. Madison wouldn't function without the support and primarily financial resources it received from the outside world.

It dares to ask what if tech companies never stopped taking, and the little protections and privacy we have in this modern digital world ceased to have meaning. Any errant thought could run the risk of a secretive organization carting you away for sedition or some other perceived premeditated criminality. A jail that isn't truly a jail—and thus void of what little protections a governmental institution would provide—detainees of Madison experience the horrors of a private prison with no oversight at all.

A frightening glimpse into what the future of forced institutionalization could look like. The days of sending a troublesome wife or unruly daughter away to an asylum for hysteria or some other heavily gendered affliction are supposed to be long gone. But what if they're not? Online spaces keep constant track of what individuals get up to, and the standards of judgment are hardly equitable. What a man could laugh off with an attempted apology could potentialy ruin a woman's life and/or career forever. Forgetting a grievance or slight is a choice, and one women are rarely offered.

This novel also has a myriad of things to say about race and the inequality of justice towards people of color, especially the fear of violence associated with Muslim and MENA people. As a white person, I'm not in a place to speak on the validity of these descriptions to present lived experiences, let alone how it could change over time.

A buzzy book (and @readwithjenna pick!) out now that really had my wheels spinning. Set in the near future and cashing in on Americans not reading the fine print - we expect, often pay for governments to keep us safe, right?

This seems like a fairly simple answer but to what lengths? THE DREAM HOTEL explores that and so much more - including themes of being a woman, motherhood, what dreams mean, surveillance, government overreach and government ineptitudes.

When Sara lands at LAX after a work conference, she is “retained” because data from her dreams has led the government to believe she will harm her husband. I thought this was a compelling and clever storyline. It displayed the many nuances within the story that I really appreciated and I was gripped with Sara’s fate. It gave Orange is the New Black vibes (though toned down a lot) and had me itching to see how it ended. But the ending is where I was incredibly underwhelmed. After all that I was like hug, okay.. Kind of boring? Especially given the content for the entire story.

Overall I did like it a lot, it was gritty and a little worrisome because none of it felt far off. (Which is why I love to dabble in speculative fiction). I do wish the ending gave me a little more to think about instead of wrapping up so neatly but overall I recommend!

This was such a great dystopian novel about what would happen if people’s dreams became monitored and used against them as evidence in future crimes. Handmaid’s Tale meets Orange is the New Black! Couldn’t put it down!

This book is a super interesting premise - it touches on important topics of civil rights, due process, AI and how we have become inseparable from technology. If you saw the movie "Minority Report" from the early 2000s, you may like this. I felt like a LOT of time was spent describing the detention facility, but I wanted to know much more about a secondary character, Julie, as well as an ending for other minor characters in the story. The ending felt incomplete - maybe a sequel is in the works? I would definitely read a sequel!

Well, this was a slightly horrifying read.

Everything that happened in the novel could happen or is heading in that direction as we speak.

I thought this was written well and the tension and the pacing was great. I liked the ideas that were explored such as the data collection of dreams and surveillance technology, especially with the surveillance of women. That was disturbing.

Overall, I would definitely recommend and will read more from this author!

Brilliant and disturbing! Literary dystopian is really having a moment right now, and if you’re at all interested in that as a category, this novel is a must-read. In addition to her lyrical writing, the novel is so inventive and mines an area that hasn’t been written about much in typical dystopian tropes/worlds: your dreams. The book is set at a women's “retention” center (basically a jail where the prisoners have a few more perks) because an algorithm that tracks data from their dreams has shown them to be a threat to society. In this case, the “retainee,” Sara Hussein, is accused of having dreamed about killing her husband—and the government believes there’s a chance she’ll actually kill him. Her quest to escape her wrongful retainment—while retaining the humanity the facility strips from her—is the heart of the book. It's such a relevant read night now, and the chilling depictions of "helpful" customer service AI hit way too close to home.

Thanks so much to Pantheon Books and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy!

Release date: Out now! 🗓️

Summary
When Sara Hussein arrives at LAX from London, she never expects to be stopped by the Risk Assessment Administration (RAA). She definitely doesn’t expect to be labeled a danger to her husband—based solely on her dreams. But that’s exactly what happens. Detained at Madison, a retention center for women flagged as high-risk, she finds herself trapped in a system that thrives on arbitrary rules and endless extensions, all dictated by the whims of the staff. As time drags on, Sara realizes that compliance isn’t getting her any closer to freedom—it’s only reinforcing the institution’s power. When she stops playing along, she starts to unravel the truth about Madison and the fear-driven system that keeps it running.
What I Liked
Sara’s character development – At the start, she’s hopeful and compliant, convinced that following the rules will help her get out. But as the story progresses, she realizes compliance only benefits those in power. By the end, she takes control in a way that feels earned.

The message about collective action – Hurting corporations where it counts (their pockets) is a real-world strategy we need to adopt. Power only shifts when the masses stop blindly following orders.

It was the right length – Some literary books drag on unnecessarily, but this one didn’t overstay its welcome.

Tech paranoia done right – Makes you think twice about integrating technology into your daily life and actually reading the fine print before signing anything.

What I Didn’t Like
The pacing was slow – Despite being under 300 pages, some chapters felt unnecessarily long.

Eisley’s POV felt pointless – She only seemed relevant when Sara was recruiting the other women, and then she just disappeared from the narrative.

Lack of clarity on SafeX – Was it actively preventing Sara from communicating with the outside world, or was that just implied? This could’ve been clearer.
Overall
I enjoyed this despite it not being my usual go-to for pacing and genre. If you like tense, character-driven sci-fi that explores capitalism, power, and non-compliance, this is worth reading.

The Dream Hotel, set in the future, follows the story of Sara, who just came back from a work trip and gets stopped by the Risk Assessment Administration. She is told that she needs to be kept under observation for twenty-one days because she is a risk to her husband. The RAA used data from her dreams to determine that she is a risk. She is then sent to a retention center with other dreamers. She is in the retention center longer than expected.

The Dream Hotel is the first book I have read by Laila Lalami. I loved it! I am usually not a science fiction fan, but this book hooked me from the beginning. It took some time to adjust to the plot, but I was engaged once I read more about the RAA and how they analyzed the dreams. The book did end abruptly, but there is so much to learn from this book.

Laila Lalami’s newest novel takes place in a highly plausible near-future world in which you can get a simple neuroprosthetic installed to help you sleep instantly and soundly. It saves the lives of sleep-deprived mothers, doctors, truckers, and so many others. But hidden in its terms and conditions is the company’s ability to sell your dreams to third-parties, including regulatory bodies.

And in this world, a novel law intended to proactively prevent crimes before they happen assigns every individual a risk score based on dozens of characteristics - including your dreams. If your score is deemed too high, you can be held in “retention” - essentially incarcerated - for your risk of committing a crime in the future, until your score goes down. Our main character, Sara Hussein, is flagged for having a score above the threshold at LAX, and when she dares to talk back to an officer, they throw her in retention: not a dream hotel, as the title implies, but a dream prison. She’s meant to be there for 21 days, but at the start of the book, she’s been there for 327.

This book is incredibly hard to read because it combines many of our worst fears into one scarily believable world: the privatization of the criminal justice system, government overreach and runaway violations of civil liberties in the name of “public safety,” and climate disasters most impacting marginalized communities like the incarcerated. I felt extreme anxiety reading this book, precisely because Lalami’s novel is not at all dissimilar to what’s going on in our current world with people who committed the most minor crimes facing the Sisyphean obstacles of bureaucracy and dehumanization to experiencing freedom ever again.

The plot is excellent, the characters are compelling, and the narrative time-shifts keep you engaged the whole time. But you’ll (begrudgingly) love this book because of the difficult questions it makes you ask and the uncomfortable realities it makes you face.

This book was ok. I loved the idea, but it fell short for me. The pacing was slow. The ending wrapped up nicely and I feel like a lot of people would like this one.

Thank you Pantheon and NetGalley for this arc
#TheDreamHotel#NetGalley