Book Review: Dream Boy by Madelyn Rosenberg and Mary Crockett

Dream Boy is a young adult novel by Madelyn Rosenberg and Mary Crockett. Annabelle Manning feels trapped in the small town of Chilton, Virginia. She has a group of good friends, and some crazy dreams that include one perfect dream boy. But the blue-eyed boy with the fairytale smile is just that, a dream. At least until the Friday afternoon he walks into her chemistry class. One of friends suspects he’s an alien. Another is pretty sure it’s all one big case of deja vu. Could Martin Zirkle really be a dream come true? More importantly, if dreams can become real, what else can? 

Dream Boy started with a really good premise. a girl dream and somehow her dream boy finds his way into the real world. as usual, getting what we think we want causes more trouble than expected. Suddenly her male best friend is acting weird and a creep girl has started making her normally nice dream time something she would much rather avoid. Then the inevitable 'you are the special one' comes about along with the love triangle- or is that parallelogram? The book had a lot of promise, and some of it really worked. I liked the character development that took place in the immediate circle of Annabelle's friends, but honestly I came to like her friends more than her. The action of the book started slowly, which actually was a perfect pacing to allow readers to figure out exactly what was going on and form their own ideas. However, I felt like towards the end the pace alternated between crazy slow and so fast that I had trouble remembering who was where are doing what. it was still a good read, and I am glad i read it, but i felt like it could have been even better with a smidgen of work on Annabelle and Martin's characters and some work on pacing. 

I would recommend Dream Boy to readers that enjoy urban fantasy and do not mind a few cliches finding their way into the story. Not a perfect read, but one worth some time this summer.

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