Lucid by Ron Bass & Adrienne Stoltz

Aside from sharing the same full name, Sloane and Maggie couldn’t be more different. Sloane is the good girl, a dedicated student and loving daughter; for the most part, she’s content with the life she has, though sometimes she wishes it were a little more exciting. Maggie, on the other hand, is living the high life as an up-and-coming actress in New York City, though she rarely admits that it sometimes gets lonely amidst all the glitz and glamour. But even though these girls’ lives seem to be the complete opposite, they’re actually not—because every night, each dreams that she’s the other. At first, it’s a delicious little secret, a sweet escape from their own lives once they close their eyes, but soon, things start to get messy. As people from their dream worlds start to bleed into their waking states, neither Sloane nor Maggie is sure anymore what’s real and what’s imaginary.

For me, Lucid was a book that held so much promise. I was captivated by the idea of two different people who dreamed each other’s lives, only to find out that only one of them might be real. And for a while, I was quite enchanted by this; I enjoyed watching how Sloane would react to what went on in Maggie’s life and vice versa. After a while, though, I started to get bored because unfortunately, I just couldn’t quite connect with either Maggie or Sloane and the pacing was lagging too much to maintain my interest, though I briefly became more interested in the plot again as it began to pick up, once the dream and waking worlds started to blend together. Ultimately, though, I was rather dissatisfied. The ending was too ambiguous and open ended that it felt like none of the questions of identity that were posed in this story were answered. Unfortunately, while I loved the concept for this book, in the end, I felt that it failed to fully deliver.

Lucid will still be enjoyed by fans of Dream Girl by Lauren Mechling, And Then Everything Unraveled by Jennifer Sturman, and Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson.

Rating: 3.5

Review copy from publisher Penguin and ALA