Review: Dreamworld by Rachel Kelly

Hey all, it’s Dani.

I’m wishing a very happy book birthday to Dreamworld, the fifth book in the Colorworld series, that if you follow me at all anywhere on social media, you’ll have heard me rave about these books for the past couple of years. Before I get into the review and everything else, I’ll first add the disclaimer that I was one of the copy editors for this book, but that did not influence my review. I was glad to get my hands on the story early because I obsessively needed to know what happened next. And this book delivered.

Again, I’m getting ahead of myself. You can find my reviews for the rest of the series (Colorworld, Teleworld, Lumaworld, and Shadoworld) on the blog BUT, you do not need to have read any of the previous books to read this one. Seriously, it was written for both readers new and old.

So, yeah, let’s get into the stunning amazingness that is Dreamworld.

Summary

A celebratory dinner on a Saturday evening with her younger brother, Ezra, is the last thing Wendy remembers. Last she knew, she was living in California, trying to stay on top of her college classes; provide for her brother; and cope with her ability to sense the emotions of others. She has no idea how she ended up in Missouri and what she’s been up to. No one, not even her brother, is around to tell her.

She only knows that years have passed, and the world is in the middle of an apocalypse. Society is steadily crumbling, and its only hope is a no-longer secret organization called the Guild made up of supernaturally gifted individuals called Prime Humans. Wendy learns that not only is she one of them, but she’s far more than an empath.

The Guild is not without opposition. The Prime Human Insurgency Alliance, led by ex-Guild member Andre Gellagher, is out to senselessly massacre all Prime Humans as well as those who support them.

The Human Movement, on the other hand, wants the Guild disbanded. They are led by the compelling and tireless Gabe Dumas, who demands that the Guild shed all secrecy to give humanity its best chance against the elements.

Wendy, who has found new purpose to her life within the Guild, is ready to fight for her world. And that means protecting the Guild, and bringing the opposition down.

**Dreamworld is the next chapter in Wendy’s story, which began with Colorworld, but Dreamworld can also be read as an introduction to the series as a whole. So even if you’ve missed the other 4 books, feel free to jump in right here! Happy reading!

My Thoughts

A big huge fantastic 5 stars for this book.

First off, can we discuss just how stunning that cover is? I mean, I know I already drooled over it in my cover review post like a month ago, but seriously, it is so dang beautiful. Definitely my favorite of the series so far.

Obviously the memory issues are what really helps this book succeed at being a great read for new readers to the series and us readers who have been around since the beginning. Now if you’re a returning reader you’ll get the bonus of picking up small details that make you think of events from the previous books, and you’ll get to see the relationships and romances of certain characters develop all over again, which is a really awesome experience.

As I told Rachel in a Facebook message, this book also completely delivers on my need to have more Mike Dumas in my life, because last year I declared Mike to be my book boyfriend, and he is still my top pick for this category. Seriously, I love Mike Dumas. Read this book yourself (or the whole series) and you’ll figure out why he’s so great.

So anyway, we have a new Wendy that develops in this book. She wakes up and doesn’t remember how she got where she is or what is going on, and soon she learns that over two years of her memory is just gone. So everything Wendy has learned over the course of this series has disappeared…she only remembers what amounts to the first couple chapters of Colorworld. This means that through the early stages of this book Wendy is forming new relationships with both brand new characters and ones that returning readers have met before but Wen is meeting for the “first time.”

Oh, I should also say that this book is an absolute behemoth. Considering I read on my Kindle app, I can’t say exactly how many physical pages it will be, but I think it’s probably about double Shadoworld…so I’m guessing somewhere in the 800-900 page range. However, the pace is good, and I just devoured this book in very little time at all.

Dreamworld also put me in a horrible writer’s block, which was unfortunate because NaNoWriMo had just started. I regret nothing. Dreamworld is the best book I have read in 2016, and I’m up to 126 books read for the year.

It was an amazing and emotional roller coaster, with such wonderful character growth, depth, and development. The Wendy and Mike partnership is fascinating to watch, and Wendy’s friendship with Shiah (and just Shiah’s ability and how she utilizes it) is just so intriguing, and of course, Wendy’s romance with Gabe all over again. It was fun to see them fall in love all over again, and to play out some conversations and scenes again in quite similar but slightly different ways.

The further into the book I got, the more the plot threads began to intertwine and when everything came together I was simply blown away.

There are some plot points I clearly can’t really get into for this review because of spoilers, but if you get a copy of this book (and you really should, dear readers because it is so worth it), and you want to talk about it with someone afterwards, feel free to find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or e-mail, and I will gladly discuss the book in more detail.

Honestly, all I can do is gush about how much Rachel’s writing has grown, how much these characters have grown, and just how complex and realistic all of this felt while I was reading it. After I read Shadoworld I questioned how exactly Rachel could top the impact it had on my life, but somehow she did it, and Dreamworld completely delivered and left me wondering where this series and these characters will go next.

There are two books left in the series, and man oh man, I can’t wait to get my hands on them…though first I must wait for Rachel to write them. So basically I’ll just be over here re-reading the series. Come join me in my favorite fandom. You won’t be disappointed.

Where to Buy

You can pick this up on Amazon right now, and it should be on Barnes & Noble soon enough. However, I highly recommend buying straight from Colorworld Books so you can get a signed edition.