Book Review: Dreamland by Sarah Dessen

Title: Dreamland

Author: Sarah Dessen

Publisher: Speak

Pages: 250

Format: Paperback

Published: June, 2012

Price: Rp141.000 (Periplus)

Rating: 4 / 5 stars

Date started: July 21, 2015 - Date finished: August 9, 2015

Synopsis:

Love can be a very dangerous thing.

After her sister left, Caitlin felt lost.

Then she met Rogerson.

When she's with him, nothing seems real.

But what happens when being with Rogerson becomes a larger problem than being without him?

Review:

On the day of Caitlin's sixteenth birthday, her sister, Cassandra decided to left her and her family. Cass only left her parents a note saying that she'll be okay and that they shouldn't be worried. She also left Caitlin a dream journal as a present. Cass was the perfect daughter, she's smart and had all of their parent's attention.

At first, it was gloomy in the O'Koren's house when Cass left. But they had to keep living their lives. When Caitlin made the cheerleading squad at her school, her mother had another thing to focus on, she became her mother's newest attention getting all of her attention, which was a new thing for Caitlin because she's always been second best to Caitlin.

Caitlin also started seeing a guy—Rogerson Biscoe. Rogerson is smart both in school and trivial knowledge, he's also pretty charming. Caitlin and Rogerson started spending more time together and Caitlin started to love Rogerson. But it isn't all happy in their relationship, the more Caitlin got to know Rogerson she started to discover a side of Rogerson that she was scared of, but at the same time she doesn't want to let Rogerson go.

“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.”

THE FEELS.

“It's funny how someone's perception of you can be formed without you even knowing it.”

Okay, so I am probably the last person to jump in on the Sarah Dessen bandwagon but damn she is a good writer. This book was written from Caitlin's POV as she deals with the how her sister left, getting newfound attention from their parents, and how she had to hide the truth about Rogerson from everyone.

At first this book started of real slow it even annoys me. The first half of this book was so bland. The problems were usual problems in any other contemporary books you can find everywhere. But once you get past it the second half of the book was just bursting of emotions I even cried at the end.

Also, the main character—Caitlin also annoys me because she's just so weak, she let all this bad things happen to her, she wouldn't do something about it, and she didn't confide in anyone about it. But throughout the course of this book I understand why, she loves Rogerson too much to hate him. Let's all just applaud Sarah Dessen in her ability of creating a douchebag named Rogerson, I hate him to the core, behind all that charm and great hair, he's just a downright douche.

But in spite of all those things that annoy me, there were parts of this book that I love. I love how caring Caitlin's mother is, I love Boo and Stewart and I want to have a neighbor like that in the future. I love Rita and all of her sassiness. I love the last few pages of this book because it made me cry.

“Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.”

Read this book guys! Power through that boring first half of the book. I promise it'll all be worthwhile in the end.

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