The Waking Dream

4.5 stars

I got this book through Booktasters on Instagram in exchange for my honest review. When I joined, they sent me links to 6 different books to choose from and I decided to go for this one for 2 reasons. The first being that the synopsis sounded intriguing, and it was the shortest book being offered and I wanted to start out easy. I didn't really go into this one with any expectations, but I am so glad that I ended up enjoying it so much. The epilogue and the prologue are from the present, but the majority of the book is about what happened in 1996. This book tackles a lot of hard topics, and I feel like it was done in a respectful and authentic way. The author did an amazing job of pulling me in and keeping me hooked. It's not often that I read a short book, and I'm fully invested in all of the characters. Usually, I just don't feel like I had enough time with the characters but that was not the case with this book. I was cheering the characters on while reading this and getting my heart broken over and over again. By the end I was in tears. My only complaint and the reason it wasn't a full 5 stars was because of the epilogue and prologue. They didn't flow well with the whole story. They just felt out of place and unneeded to me.