Sixteen-year-old Zara "Zip" McKee lives for three things: basketball, books, and bailing out of tiny Titusville, Illinois, where the junior high and high school are in the same building and everyone's known everyone else since birth. But when Kieran Lanier moves to town and passes out on her desk on his first day at school, Zip's life gets complicated in a way she never dreamed.
Zip McKee is just a junior trying to get through school in the sleepy, small town of Titusville, Illinois. However, the arrival of a new family in town shakes up her small world. She finds herself growing closer to Kieran, the new boy with narcolepsy. However, she soon finds out that his narcolepsy isn't exactly normal - sometimes when he dreams, he dreams of the future. Together Zip, Kieran, and his family try to piece together why that happens.
My review: 4 out of 5 stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, let me just say that right off of the bat. The dialogue between the two main characters was often witty, flirtatious banter and it fit perfectly with them. The parents seemed like they could be my mom and dad. Everyone was given a different personality, and no one was made an archetype. For someone who enjoys the characters most of all out of a book, I was highly impressed and really liked all of the characters introduced.
The plot does move slowly, which is what made the synopsis rather difficult to write. You find out the boy has premonition like dreams a bit early on, but the plot twists, which actually delve into the actual plot, come a lot later. Sometimes I did wonder if the plot would even go anywhere, or if this would be another Twilight-esque 'no plot until the last stretch' type book. I enjoyed the plot when it came about, but it doesn't exactly grab you for a while. There are also a few typos which actually changed some of the meaning of the text and took me out of the story as I had to reread a couple sentences over and over trying to understand what the author was trying to say.
The only big criticism I would give is that there is a noticeable lack of diversity. I don't think any of the characters are anything but white - which may be understandable as it is a small town, but it's a bit of lazy writing not to include other races. As to be expected, there were no queer characters, which, even if they are in a small town, there's definitely a queer person in that town. I still stand by my headcanon that Kayla, Kieran's sister, has a bit of a crush on Zip and that was why she was even more so standoffish towards her than towards anyone else, but it would still have been nice to have a bit of actual representation.
What really sells this story are the characters. All highly believeable, even the baddies felt like I could have known a guy or two like them. Though the Chunk Of Dialogue Exposition came kind of early and seemed rather unlikely for Kieran to be telling a complete stranger, it later made a lot of sense and kept the relationships between all of the characters extremely believeable.
This is the first book of a trilogy, but it ends nicely. Not too many plot lines are left hanging, but there's definitely enough story left to be told for another book or two. The kindle edition for In Your Dreams does give a very lengthy preview for the next book, which starts shortly after the first book ends.
So, great characters, a pretty good plot, a disappointing amount of diversity, and a few interesting typos. I give this book a weak 4 out of 5 stars.
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