♡ Dreamland isn't at all what I thought it would be, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. It's heavy, and has a rather bleak tone throughout. I don't mind reading books with atmospheres such as this, but it did feel draining at times. Caitiln's suffering and emotional frustration is heartbreaking, but I loved seeing the complexity Sarah Dessen builds upon her character.

♡ I also admire how original Caitlin's voice is, and I thought the portrayal of the toxic relationship is handled well! I'm also a fan of any book that deals with photography, so it was nice to see how this hobby helped shape Caitlin. This novel is unforgiving, but also hopeful, in the sense that it shows how the ones who truly love us, will always be there when it matters.

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And this was a perfect reminder why calling Sarah Dessen a romance author pisses me off. This is NOT a romance by any stretch of that word.

What an intense, disturbing, painful look at dating abuse. This is a story about feeling powerless and weak, about how you function and operate when staying in the abusive relationship seems safer than getting out.

Wow. Wow. Wow. This is a gut punch.

Actual Stars 4.5

This was a really good but hard read. And even harder to try to do a review on!

The subject matter quite frankly shocked me and caught me off guard and my first thought was OMG this is not really YA material. But then I had to think why is it not? This happens to teens, college students and adults alike. There is no age discrimination for these women. It's actually a good thing that there is someone out there who is giving a voice to real life issues for younger people as well because they are also affected.
In fact a good friend of mine went through a situation very similar to Caitlin's when we were in high school. And it was also kept quiet, and I had no idea until several months after the fact. What I thought then was this is not the norm, but I'm starting to realize this a factual situation that more girls/women are struggling with and keep hidden than most people are aware of. So reading this brought out some pretty powerful raw emotions. A lot of anger, and a lot of hurt. Caitlin's story was very realistic and once again shows how talented an author Sarah Dessen is.

This was the third book I've read by Ms. Dessen and probably the most emotional because of my personal experience. This book cemented my fandom of a very talented author with an incredible voice. I am looking forward to catching up on all her past books as well as any future ones.

Well shit. Didn't realize I was going to read a memoir of my teenage years

Wake up, Caitlin, Mr Lensing had said. But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away.

I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called my name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.

Dreamland was my first Sarah Dessen book, and for some reason I always thought she wrote light-hearted, fun, romantic contemporaries meant for a warm, breezy summer day. But I was so wrong – how utterly wrong I was. When I turned the last page, I sat on my bed for a moment, dazed.

This gritty, emotional tale follows Caitlin, an eternally-second-best, straight-B girl living in the shadow of her absolutely perfect older sister, Cass. But when Cass runs away, their whole family is distraught. Caitlin now has to try and fill the gaping hole Cass left behind, but it's almost impossible when she faces her withdrawn, upset mother and her lackluster father. Caitlin is sidelined or never given much thought to in the face of their great loss.

Then she meets Rogerson. He's charming, funny, mysterious and magnetic, and he gives off a dangerous aura. It isn't long before Caitlin gets involved with him. Being with him makes her forget about everything else that's wanting in her life. But what happens when being with Rogerson becomes a bigger problem than being without him?

Sarah Dessen's prose flows beautifully. It is smooth, compelling, almost lyrical. Before long you are swept up in it, bound towards the inevitable end, and by the time you see the ending coming it is too late. I felt like this reading experience truly wrecked me. Characters really come alive off the page as you read, and every scene felt painfully real. I couldn't put down this train wreck of a book at all.

But I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real.

Caitlin broke my heart. I watched her carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, watched her life begin a downward spiral, and I wept for her. From the heady rush of first love, Caitlin was brutally transported into literal hell. After the first time Rogerson hit her, he only continued to do it repeatedly as the story went on. Her whole life became ruined by fear, as she danced with caution around her boyfriend, always trying to keep him in the best mood she could. Nobody around her saw what was really happening to her, and Caitlin retreated further and further from reality, choosing instead to float through life in a kind of dream. Her gradual decline tugged at heartstrings and brought out all the emotions in me.

I could have just gotten out of the car and walked up to my house, leaving him behind forever. Things would have been very different if I had done that. But the fact was that I loved Rogerson. It wasn't just that I loved him, even: it was that I loved what I was when I was with him. Not a little sister, the pretty girl's sidekick, the second runner-up. All I'd ever wanted was to make my own path, far from Cass's. And even after what had happened, I wasn't ready to give that up just yet.

Sometimes we fall into the easy habit of victim-blaming. Why didn't she still leave him when she could? Why didn't she tell someone the first time? But I know what it is to have loved someone so much you would forgive them anything until it's too late. And so I understood Caitlin, how she struggled with herself for so long. Yet she was brave, and resilient in her own way.

I'm very happy that Sarah Dessen decided to touch on this subject in YA. She didn't just gloss over it either - she fleshed out all the gritty details, creating a poignant masterpiece that will touch the hearts of readers everywhere. There are no words to describe how much I loved this book, or how much it affected me. I myself felt like I was dreaming as I was reading - everything seemed so surreal and impossible. It was as if I was dreaming with Caitlin and then rudely awakened with her, as well.

I was worn out, broken: He had taken almost everything. But he'd been all I'd had, all this time. And when the police led him away, I pulled out of the hands of all these loved ones, sobbing, screaming, everything hurting, to try and make him stay.

The only thing I was a little disappointed with was the little amount of closure we got. After most of the book was so brilliantly written, the ending seemed rushed, which was a letdown so I deducted a star. I would have loved to know more about Caitlin taking the first steps to heal herself both mentally and emotionally, and how she rebuilt her relationships with the people closest to her, instead of a few lines scribbled in the last few chapters.

But otherwise, this book far exceeded my expectations. It was a wonderful read I never saw coming!

"If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love - and everything that followed it - is part of letting it go."

Dreamland is a rather depressing novel that delves into some disturbing subject matter in regards to abuse within a relationship. What starts off as a blooming relationship full of all the potential in the world quickly falters into a depressing dynamic of physical and emotional abuse. Sarah Dessen's novel deals with these depressing matters in a realistic way, never afraid to show the darker side of these kinds of relationships in favor of a happier and safer novel. This author may be primarily known for her quirky romance stories, but I assure you that Dreamland is far more than your average Dessen affair.

Caitlin, the protagonist and abuse victim, is portrayed as a real individual who makes mistakes and sometimes chooses to do the wrong thing even when the right thing to do seems so obvious to the reader. Dessen does not characterize Caitlin as an all-knowing young girl who knows just what to do in these horrific times. Rather, she is portrayed like a real person who, more often than not, stays in these bad relationships and puts up with the abuse out of fear or a misguided sense of love. Like in many real-world abusive relationships, these matters are never as clear-cut as an outsider makes them out to be, for when one is trapped in the oppressive grip of an abusive lover, things are rarely as easy as simply leaving or calling the police for help. A lot of emotional manipulation takes place, and Dessen outlines these instances quite well in her novel, bringing attention to the many ways in which an abuser tricks and guilt trips a significant other into staying with them or keeping silent about the abuse.

Dreamland is aptly named so for its dream-like, hazy atmosphere during the moments where Caitlin emotionally retreats into her damaged psyche in order to escape her abuser. These heartbreaking moments highlight the emotional damage done to an abuse victim, once again enlightening the reader about the toll taken on an abused individual even during the times when the abuser is not physically harming them. It was incredibly sad to read these parts, but also very eye-opening, for I learned how some people attempt to cope with their abuse in lieu of leaving the relationship outright.

Dreamland was my first foray into the world of Sarah Dessen novels, and it remains the most heartbreaking one that I have read so far. Despite its dark tone and gut-wrenching subject matter, this novel is one of my favorites by this author. Dessen does a great job showing the realities of abuse and how difficult it is for somebody to get out of such a relationship. This was a depressing novel, and I can see it being a bit too unsettling for some readers, especially those accustomed to Dessen's usual bright and bubbly romance novels. However, if you can get past the moments of gratuitous abuse and look to the novel for insight into the mind of the victim, then you will surely get a lot out of Dreamland. You will be getting into a well written, engrossing, and revealing novel about the dangers of staying in an unloving relationship with someone who truly does not love you.

Dreamland is a book I’ve had sitting on myself for a very long time. Tough topics scare me on occasion and it can be difficult for me to pick up a book I know is going to be an emotional and raw read.

Sarah Dessen mentioned many things at the beginning of Dreamland especially that brought me back to my childhood. Things Caitlyn did with her sister and certain other nostalgic things. The situations that made me reminisce are what got me reading through the first half of the book. I knew from the summary what was supposed to unfold in Dreamland, I was surprised at what point Caitlyn’s life started to fall apart. This didn’t make me not like the book in the least, but the anticipation for horrible things to happen added to the suspense.

Once Caitlyn’s relationship with Rogerson starts to go South, you can see Caitlyn’s relationships start to change with everyone else around her. Nothing happens overnight, it’s a slow progression everything around her changes.

I feel a bit guilty about the next thing I’m going to say. Sarah Dessen made me feel empathy for Caitlyn, but also for Rogerson. Hopefully feeling like this doesn’t make me a horrible person and I’m hoping others have felt the same way while reading this. When we get a look into Rogerson’s home life, his relationship with his father is what made me have sympathy for him.

Right before Cailtyn begins dating Rogerson, her sister Cass ends up leaving home out of the blue to start her life somewhere else and cuts off contact completely with her family. Cass leaves Caitlyn with a dream journal as a birthday present. Through the months of Cass being gone and Rogerson treating Caitlyn the way he does, Caitlyn starts to use her dream journal as a way to talk about her relationship with Rogerson in letters to her sister. We only see a few of these while reading the book, but these letters and notes were the roughest to read for me. I guess having Caitlyn spell out to someone what was happening to her just got to me.

Dreamland made me think about what I might be overlooking and missing in my day to day life…that freaks me out a bit. Not knowing something horrible is going on right under your nose and not recognize it, that would crush me.

*2.5 stars*

** TW: PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE IN RELATIONSHIP, DRUG USE **

A book of hers that's so different than her other ones, but this deeply dark story is really worth the read.

I officially read my first Sarah Dessen Book despite having at least six on my shelves! I thoroughly enjoyed her writing and will most definitely be reading more from her.

Full review to come.

So this was a short book to get through (only 260 pages) but it left a big impact. I thought at first that things moved a bit slow, but once you get to the meat of the story, you won't be able to put this down at all. You are going to just be shocked and dismayed at the things that are going on with the main character (Caitlin) throughout this book.

"Dreamland" opens on Caitlin's birthday when she and her parents realize that her older sister Cassandra has ran away to be with a guy she fell in love with after like three weeks. Cassandra does not go to Yale and stays away from her family and refuses to talk to them. Caitlin is left adrift since she is not used to being her, without her perfect older sister nearby to emulate. This leaves a hole in Caitlin where a boy named Rogerson Biscoe (his name even sounds douchey) steps in. Before Caitlin realizes it, somehow her whole life becomes Rogerson.

I felt for Caitlin. Her mother becomes a barely functioning person at first, and her father is in denial after her sister runs away. She's trying her best to not be a problem, that even means not complaining when no one celebrates her birthday. She's talked into joining the cheerleading squad by her best (and only friend) though she doesn't want to and after she starts seeing Rogerson, her grades fall and she's spending most of her time getting high with him and his other friends. It's like a slow roll to another world and Caitlin doesn't know how to or even want to really get out of it. That is until Rogerson hits her the first time. And then the book goes dark. Because you read about Caitlin's justifications, her fear, her starting to realize after a while that even when she's perfect that Rogeron really just wants a reason to hit her. I wanted to scoop up this fictional character and hug her.

Dessen does a good job of showing Caitlin realizing that she's in a bad relationship, but not really knowing how to get out of it. And with her parents still focused on other matters, it becomes easy for her to fool them into thinking everything is okay with her.

Dessen always has recurring characters in her YA books and I swear that Rogerson was in Lock and Key (which I also loved). Too bad no one ran him over with a car.

I also love how Dessen shows all of these women in this book in relationships they call "love" but honestly are not. Or at least I would not call them love between two people who trust and respect each other. Cassandra's life is a mess and her deciding that her parents put all their hopes into her to have her run off with some dude did not endear her to me at all. Even Caitlin's best friend who is only defined when she is dating someone I found a bit sad. So when Caitlin even when she realizes that Rogerson hitting her is awful and she doesn't think she can keep hanging on to him, I get why she hid what was going on and kept trucking along with it. That's cause she's told over and over again that love is the answer even when the other person is not right for you. I think a little window opens up a bit when Caitlin finds out another friend of hers finally had it with her deadbeat boyfriend and left him.

The writing was raw and honest. And I loved how you had Caitlin slowly coming into her own and realizing that maybe her sister was not as perfect as she always thought.

The ending was a surprise and I love that the book didn't just take an easy way out with and everything was super okay with everyone, the end.