Dreamland - Reviewed by Stephanie Best

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen
Reviewed by Stephanie Best

                Dreamland by Sarah Dessen follows the journey of a teenage girl and her downward spiral. On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Caitlin wakes up to find her older sister Cass gone without a trace. Cass was supposed to go to Yale in the coming weeks but gave it up and ran away with her boyfriend Adam. Her mother goes into extreme hysterics and it takes Caitlin’s making the cheerleading squad to snap her out of it. Before she left, Cass had been involved in many extra-curricular activities that her mother was just as involved with. Caitlin hates cheerleading but stays with it because it keeps her mother’s mind off of her sister’s departure. One day, Caitlin meets Rogerson Biscoe and her life completely changes its direction. They start an abusive relationship involving sex and drugs. She quickly abandons all of her friends for Rogerson and starts to lose herself. Will Cass come home? Can Caitlin escape her relationship? More importantly, does she want to?

                I thought Dreamland was okay. It was good if you like that kind of stuff, but it wasn't one of my favorite books. I've read many of Sarah Dessen’s other novels and I've like all of them but I didn't like this one. It surprised me by how different it was to her other stories. From what I’ve read, most of her stories are more about young romance with an obvious happy ending and I enjoyed those. This was not one of those stories. Personally, if you are one to like any of Ellen Hopkins books, then I would recommend this novel. Overall, the book didn’t grab my attention and didn’t really make me want to continue and finish the book.