The up-side of being sick as a dog and flat on my back for a day was that during my awake periods I got to do some reading for fun. And I read Monica Jackson’s In My Dreams
I loved it.
I picked it up because it looked like my sort of book — I like contemporary novels, like paranormal, and there were a couple of intriguing teases on the cover blurb that pulled me in.
But the cover misses the book entirely. If you go in expecting just a romance with some spookiness tossed in, you’re going to get way more than you paid for. In My Dreams works well as a romance. But it’s much more than that. It also works as a well-thought-out and well-crafted fantasy novel — one that ought to thoroughly piss off both fundamentalist Christians and hard-line pagans, because Jackson ties in Christianity with magic in a way that rings true, and that soars. The magic system is sweet, the backstory is moving and in places heartbreaking, and the themes about family and self-sacrifice resonate through the entire book.
While you’re waiting for Jackson to write a stunner of a big fat fantasy tome (and I am now waiting for that very thing) pick up In My Dreams.
Pick up your copy of In My Dreams from your closest independent bookstore with Book Sense.
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