Wake -- Lisa McMann

Seventeen-year-old Janie has had a major problem since she was eight years old:  Whenever she is in close proximity to someone who falls asleep, she is pulled into their dream and forced to watch whatever it is that they experience.  While this secret ability (Because, c'mon -- how could she explain her problem without getting locked up?) has always been frustrating, annoying, confusing and sometimes scary, it has never been downright terrifying -- UNTIL NOW .

A group of the YAs at the library have been bugging me to read Wake for ages now -- and a bunch of them are looking forward to the sequel, which comes out next month.  So I (obviously) had to read it.  Or they would have hit me with it.  It's a great pick for reluctant readers -- it has a great beginning hook, short sentences and chapters, lots of action and dialogue and an excellent premise -- and I know I'll be handing it to lots of teens for all of those reasons.

However.  I, personally, had some large issues with it.  There will be spoilers below, so skip this if you haven't read it and are planning to...

I felt that the main characters were defined by their issues -- Janie is THE HEROINE WITH A SECRET ABILITY, Cabel is THE SENSITIVE, ABUSED BOY WITH A SECRET, Carrie is THE BEST FRIEND WITH A SECRET DEAD BROTHER, Melinda is THE BITCHY CHEERLEADER WHO IS SECRETLY A LESBIAN -- so I never particularly cared about any of them and they never become particularly real to me.

I also felt that the story wasn't believable.  I'm not talking about the secret ability element or what dreams are really like or anything like that.  That's not an issue.  I read loads of fantasy of all stripes, and magic/the paranormal doesn't throw me for a loop.  It was the coincidence of Janie just happening to work in a nursing home where a resident just happened to possess the same ability.  It was Cabel's undercover job with the police and his police captain's knowledge of the reality of Janie's ability due to having previously worked with* the nursing home resident.  My suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

My last issue is this:  In real life, Cabel's chest is covered in burn scars because his abusive father (now dead) doused him in lighter fluid and torched him -- in Cabel's nightmares, Cabel becomes a burned monster-man with finger knives.  While I do see how the pop culture image of Freddy Krueger could have wormed its way into Cabel's subconscious and I definitely understand that as this is a spooky thriller that deals with the dreamworld, the author may have wanted to give a nod to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, it was still really hard for me to take.  Maybe because there was no overt mention of it anywhere?  (Unless I missed it.)  And then it occurred to me that Janie's mother's alcoholism paralleled Nancy's mother alcoholism in the first Elm Street movie, and my "this is hard to take" feeling blossomed into something stronger.

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*That is an assumption on my part -- the captain knew the nursing home lady and then at the end of the book offers Janie a job, so I thought it was a fair leap.  Which suggests that the sequel might go in a really different, interesting direction -- so while I had pretty serious problems with this book, it's very possible that I'll give the sequel a go anyway.