I requested this several years ago and I don't think it's a book for me anymore. So I will not be reviewing at this time, but if I do read it, I will update this review. Thank you for the opportunity.

The premise of manufactured dreams and an underground city, where people are kicked out once they turn 35 is very intriguing! The budding romance and the angst of growing up (and being assigned a job until 35) all had such great conflict. This story moved quick and left questions for the next book in the series. I hope one day we get to know more about Skellig City.

This was a very odd book that I admit was not for me. I can’t connect to the characters. The writing is very well done, just not my style.

I tried to get through this book so many times and I'm finally giving up and calling it quits. Dystopians are hit or miss for me and despite all the rave reviews, it reminded me of Divergent (which I REALLY didn't like) and I continuously put it down. DNF at 61%

I hate that there's not a second one to jump into already. I'm concerned about my boy Flynn and for Deirdre and the rest of the people stuck in Skellig City. This greatly saddens me because it seems like there's not going to be a part two since it's been a few years since this one was written. I'll admit it was slow going, there's a lot of moving parts within in this story but I pushed that all aside to just focus on the characters and now I feel for these little children.

This was really fun at the beginning but I feel like as the story continued, the execution kind of fell through for me. I still enjoyed how events unfolded but I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would have.

The book is so different from the genre that I usually read that it is even difficult to do a review without giving any spoiler.
How could it be classified? Dystopia? Fantasy? Futuristic?

Friendship, loyalty, determination, trust, freedom of choice, these are some of the issues addressed in this story, and despite the few pages, make the reader think.
4 stars

I ended up not enjoying this one as much as I had hoped. I thought that something was missing and I really struggled to get through the story.

This book was a 154 pages of NOPE!!! 3 hours of what the heck is going on.

The synopsis sounded like something I would have liked.
My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It was an all right story. I had a hard time!even connecting with the characters.

It’s like they are stuck in a snowglobe and while you read it you can see the limits and lies forced in the glass to keep the people from looking outside and realizing that there is a life outside. The book made you see the politics and reminded you how easily we humans tend to ignore than to fight against the tide of indifference.

A highly original take on the dystopian and steampunk genres. Recommended.

3.5 Stars

This story was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a sucker for dystopian novels. With that being said, the genre has been tapped when it comes to unique and unusual dystopian societies. Coming into this novel, I had pretty low expectations. But the premise sounded intriguing enough that I was up for the challenge.

The story revolves around a place called Skellig City. All of the inhabitants are implanted with a device in their heads that enables them to select different dreams every night that they get to experience. Their world is built around these dreams, with jobs such as Dream Makers, Dream Drones and various others. Another piece to their world entails the Descent, a ritual in which a person reaching the age of 35 gets dropped down a tube to Tír na nÓg a.k.a. the Irish version of Heaven.

Deirdre, the daughter of Dream Makers, begins to question her society when one of her Mom's friends, Maeve, leaves a hidden message in one of her dreams that she has Deirdre test out. Another driving factor in Deirdre's quest is her close friend, Flynn, who is captured by the Dream Justices due to imperfect genetics, which is another reason that would lead to an early Descent.

The characters in general are rather bland as they felt rather cliche and not unique. I personally didn't feel very connected to either of the main characters. But on the flip-side, I was really caught by surprise by the world building. The author really built up the town of Skellig City and left lots of questions to the reader as to what it all entails. There's an interesting cliff hanger at the end of the story that'll draw you in to reading the upcoming sequel.

The character writing was very intriguing in this story but it felt like it should have been longer and filled out a bit more. I found the concept of "dreams" being a reward equal parts fascinating and skin crawling. It's almost a little to close to my nightmares. I wasn't overly impressed with the whole story but I think there are definitely YA readers who will gobble this up. At least it is a unique perspective.

So interesting anx engaging. A really good dystopian novel. Though it was difficult to get the hang of the book in the beginning ,overall i really loved it

I love the premise of this story. The idea of this dystopian world where a government has control of everything including your dreams. It felt like Divergent and Inception had a baby (sort of). I was excited to read it and get immersed in an interesting plot. I love the concept, the execution ruined it for me.

The beginning of the story is confusing at best because it's not told from Deirdre's perspective. Alternating perspectives through the book just continued to muddle the actual plot. I appreciated getting to read through both Deirdre and Flynn's viewpoints but other perspectives like her mother and sister didn't connect well.
Deirdre annoyed me and was never a completely believable character. I never understood where her rebellion came from or why she wanted so badly to fight the system. From an outsiders perspective, this seems obvious, the government has far too much power over its people. This character, however, is one of the privledged few. She's been born into this society and grown up with it, the fact that she seems so shocked by it doesn't make sense. She seems frequently unaware of the depth of the risks she's taking which just led it to feel even less genuine.
Flynn was an okay character but his illness didn't really make a lot of sense to me. The book seemed to want to portray a real illness that exists but not correctly. This leads me to my next issue...
Age just isn't portrayed correctly at all throughout the book. I can get behind the idea of everyone being sent off at age 35 but the fact is that's fairly young for people to have as many wrinkles, streaks of gray hair, and health problems as portrayed in the book. It's very possible that the characters might have these issues due to stress or trauma but that's nothing to do with age.
I love the premise and the concept of this book but for such a short story it had far too many elements and became very confusing because of this. I would have preferred more focus one some of these and perhaps the introduction of more in future books or just a longer book, to begin with.
This didn't feel like a complete book in the end but more a prequel to an actual series. It never really wrapped anything up and dumped us into a strange environment that never felt real to me. In retrospect, it felt more like an info dump about this universe and a few encounters with some brief action than the full first book in a series.
Overall, this just wasn't the book for me. I wanted to like it so much and still can appreciate the concept behind it. It's an amazing idea for a story that I'd love to read. The way it's written, however, isn't my cup of tea. I do encourage you to still give it a try to see if it will work for you.

I thought there was a lot of potential in the premise of this book but unfortunately this was a DNF. I tried going back to this book twice but couldn't get through it due to the the writing style. It felt all over the place and confusing. Also too much telling