Elaine White's Life in Books

Book – The Dream Keeper (The Dream Keeper Chronicles - Book 1)
Author – Mikey Brooks
Star rating - ★★★★☆
Plot – very entertaining, original, good flow
Characters – loved all the characters and how detailed they were

Movie Potential - ★★★★★
Ease of reading – very easy to read
Cover - ✔
Suitable Title - ✔
Would I read it again - ✔

** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK, BY THE AUTHOR, IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW **

The book is really nicely presented, with chapter headings and good formatting. I didn't notice any spelling or grammar mistakes, and if there were any they were so unobtrusive to the reading of the story that I never caught them.

We come into the story, in the middle of events, which I love. I really think Gladamyr is a brilliant character, who holds the others together. The very idea of the world of Dreams, and how it connects to the moral (human) world is so clever and original. I've never seen it done before.

Gladamyr is a Mare – a nightmare creature created by a human child. He's also one of those tortured souls who is born to be bad, but yearns to be good. I really felt his struggle, time and again, even when the story wasn't told through his POV. At the end of every chapter, I couldn't wait to see what he did next, or what the children did. I think making Gladamyr a shape shifter was believable and wasn't just a clever twist to the story, so that he could become what they needed in their time of need. His gift didn't always help him or save who he wanted to save, so desperately.

Continuing on from that, I don't think there was any aspect of the story that was specifically designed to be a help or hindrance to the characters, purely to push the story along. When I read a fantasy book, especially one for teens or a YA audience such as this book, I want every aspect to be wholly believable and reasonable. I don't want the characters doing anything silly, just because it's a fantasy book and anything goes. Everything in this book was made true and honest to the world it was set in and the characters who lived it.

I really love the two human kids; Parker and Kaelyn. They're your typical high school kids, caught up in high school politics, until something much more important comes along. Parker is a typical teenage boy, caught in the confusing middle ground of popularity, where he's popular enough, but he's also one mistake from social ruin. Kaelyn is the opposite; she's already at the bottom of the social register at school, lost and doubting herself. Her aunt is a psychic, which doesn't help her popularity, and Kaelyn has an inner critic, telling her that she's fat and ugly, which should explain why no-one likes her. We learn from her aunt, Zelda, that she's just curvaceous. Both kids need to learn to stand up for themselves in different way and do so throughout the book.

I was so impressed with the way that the author developed the children. Not only did they learn from each other and still have to battle their own fears and doubts, right until the end of the story, but they learned about each other and about themselves, as they did so. There were times when I got angry with Parker for saying something, later on in the book, that he should have known better than to say. But then he would apologise and see that it was wrong. Kaelyn would do the same; taking a compliment as criticism and then getting mad about it. I loved how they interacted together, protecting and caring for each other, even when they didn't want to. I love that Parker shows Kaelyn that she's not the social reject she thinks she is and that he learns to appreciate her for who she is. I love that Kaelyn teaches Parker to think for himself and not let the other kids at school dictate how he acts or what he says.

Together, these kids have an adventure, but the most important adventure, I feel, is that they are starting to discover who they really are. Away from social high school dramas, they've grown and learned things that no-one but each other could teach them.

There were only three problems I had with this book.
1. The texting. I'm glad the author put in brackets what they were saying, because I've never seen texting like this before. It would have been easier to either insert the bracketed text on its own or create a shortened version of the words that still made sense.
2. There are phrases like 'whack job' that are reworked as 'quack job'. Simple, common phrases have been changed in minor ways, but every time the new version came along, it surprised me and jarred me out of the reading.
3. Sometimes it was hard to imagine the fight scenes or the creatures that the Mares and Gladamyr turned into. There's something a lot going on, so stopping to try to imagine these unfamiliar creatures did disrupt the reading and I often had to read the description over a few times, to get a clear picture in my head.

Overall, I find the story captivating, intriguing and original. The only thing I've ever read that could touch it, is my all time favourite YA series, Dragons in Our Midst, by Brian Davis. I loved the simple, dream like quality of each new adventure and how it was something that either child would want to step into. The more I read of Parker, Kaelyn and Gladamyr, the more I like them and see them growing. The ending took me by surprise. I can't wait to read book 2, to find out where it leads.