A review by weasley1912
Dreamland by Nicholas Sparks

emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

The Story was good for the most part. Honestly I felt like I was gonna rate it pretty high until the last chunk of it. I was interested in all of the characters.  It's weird to me to read about tiktok celebrities as a characterization but it was still neat. It was a nice romance. I thought the second POV was a bit odd just because it was sooo different, but the summery said they were connected in a bizarre way. Yeah they sure were. The second pov isn't real. It's a delusion/hallucinations his sister is having. My experiences definitely impact my opinions here more than most books but my major issues were: 
1. Her mental illness was "a rare type of bipolar 1 which includes a detailed delusions/hallucinations" . To me this feels like a cop out. If this is a real presentation of bipolar,  as he said, it's rare. Which means you are representing a large group of people with symptoms they don't actually experience. The average person isn't going to remember that this was a rare presentation of symptoms . They will hear bipolar and remember this.  Bad representing for mental health matters to me. 
2. One of the last things in the book is him thinking to himself and he says even though he loves his family very much, between his aunt's stroke and his sisters bipolar, they have created a prison for him that he'll never escape. That is an enormous slap in the face to me. As someone who struggles with mental illness it is my biggest fear than my family and friends would feel burdened by me. And to have him say it. Even if it was just to himself. That's devastating to me. 
3. The book ended and the couple had split for good reasons. It was practical and logical and the right decision.  And then the epilogue only exists so they can get back together. It felt cheap.
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