I really can't believe that the series has come to an end. But what an ending it was! McMann did not disappoint with the third and final book in the Dream Catcher Trilogy.
We come into Gone, just a few weeks after the ending in Fade. Janie and Cabel are getting ready to take a mini vacation before starting up with their undercover police work. They head to the lake to spend time with Cabel's brother and sister-in-law. While there, they have a few days of slight peace; though Janie still gets sucked into Cabel's dreams and even one dream while learning to water ski. After getting frantic voice mails from Carrie stating that she is taking Janie's mother to the hospital, Cable and Janie leave. Once they reach the hospital, they find out that it wasn't for Janie's mom, but a man known as Henry.
Henry is someone that Janie, doesn't know; but she soon realizes just how much of a connection that they really have. See, Henry is Janie's father. Janie really has no idea how to handle this new information, and with whatever she is contemplating in the beginning of the book, this added information and her mother's attitude is really getting to her. I wondered through the whole book, exactly what it was that Janie was contemplating, and until the end I didn't really grasp it. I'm sure if I thought about it long and hard I would have figured it out, but I was too worried about how Janie was really going to deal with knowing about her father.
Cabel tries to help Janie find out more about her father, and eventually he finds out where Henry lived and takes Janie there. When they arrive, Janie is a little apprehensive and doesn't really want to find out anything, but after looking around the house a bit, Janie starts to wonder why he lived out in the middle of nowhere and why he pretty much isolated himself.
While Janie is still being sucked into dreams, and for her; Cabel's are the worst. She goes to visit her father, whom is in a coma all through the book. When she goes into his room, she is sucked into his dreams, and she has to fight really hard to get out of it. While doing more research and thinking Janie realizes that the dream catching is hereditary and that she got it from her father. Miss Stubin makes another appearance and that is when Janie realizes everything.
We find out shortly after that, just what it is that Janie has been contemplating and just what she is going to do. I wasn't happy with the decision she came to and I will admit that I teared up quite a bit. Janie is trying to figure out how to help her father in his dream and while she is sleeping beside his bed in the hospital, Henry catches Janie's dream and she actually gets to speak to him. It was a bittersweet moment between father and daughter.
Henry passes the next day and while Janie is trying to get her alcoholic mother to actually have a funeral for him, and then get her mother to the funeral, she learns that while Henry may have isolated himself, Janie does have a "family" that loves and supports her. The funeral is sad and her mother plays the drunk perfectly, but Janie has the support of Cabel, Carrie, and even her "boss".
We go on to see what Janie decided and how she slowly starts to enact her decision, then after about a day she realizes that maybe she made the wrong choice. There are always two sides to every story, the one that you see and then the one that actually happened. Now maybe, it didn't really happen like that, but would you take the chance? Knowing what you know for sure would happen or guessing that just maybe everything would be ok? Could you live with leaving the ONLY one you love and never seeing them again? Janie answers these questions, and realizes that she may need to reconsider exactly what she wants out of her life.
I really can't believe that the trilogy is finished and I won't get to see just how Janie's decision affected everyone around her, and what exactly is happening now. ( )

For the record, I was ready to cry this entire book. Without learning what Janie's choice ultimately was, I knew enough to know that McMann wasn't going to pull a deus ex machina and make this a fairy tale happily ever after. I may have wished for that, strongly, but in the end that wouldn't have fit either the tone of the narrative or the characters themselves. Yes, Janie deserved the miracle cure to her future blinding and crippling Dreamcatcher abilities, but no, that's not what McMann led us to believe would happen.


After the disturbing events of Fade, Janie is left with the knowledge that in the future she'll end up blind, crippled and miserable. Though she resolutely wants to not think about that, and seeks reassurance from Cabel, his dreams tell her the truth of his feelings and her intuition tells her the reality of the situation. Her future is either complete isolation from everyone she loves or becoming a cripple in her 20's and becoming a burden to everyone she loves. Morton's Fork (ie: a choice between a rock and a hard place). Really, in my opinion, Janie was heck of a lot stronger then I would have been. She knows the future isn't going to be pretty--no matter how many delusions she conjures--but she persists in trying to find a better option.


The situation with her mother, boiling through the first two books, reaches a fever pitch with the inclusion of her absentee father. Actually a lot of situations reach a fever pitch--her mother, Cabel, her 'job' with the Captain, her father. At one point she is so overwhelmed that she welcomes the isolation idea, if only to get away from all the responsibilities she has (one way or another) placed upon herself. I took comfort in the fact that Janie had more backbone, more force of will in this book. Despite what she said, I could see that she wanted to be around people. That she needed to almost, but needed to be around them without having to worry that she was the stable personality.


There are some surprises throughout, and Miss Stubins makes a return to help Janie. Cabel is less of a 'super-boyfriend' in this book. He makes mistakes--true mistakes that can't be taken back, is blind to other things and insensitive to some others. The relationship felt fuller because of it honestly. Most surprising to me was Carrie in this novel. She matured and was really there for Janie. In some ways she understood better than Cabel I think, maybe because she didn't know Janie's deal.


Janie's choice, in the end, was bittersweet. Was it the best choice? Maybe. Was it her only choice...again maybe. Making her choice and choosing the direction of her life was like putting together a puzzle for her. She had the knowledge that Miss Stubins gave to her. She learned what could happen if she chose a different path from her father. But it wasn't a complete picture. Watching Janie struggle and seek guidance and cope with all the pieces was heartbreaking. I did cry, at the end, when the Captain gave her some help with one of her problems at least. When she had the talk with Cabel. When she made her final choice.


I read the book in just under two hours, non-stop. It was a quick, though dense, read, but more than that I kept reading because I had to know. Each page, each snippet of time, made me want to know Janie's choice. I've said before, but it bears saying again--McMann's unique way of telling the story, as if its like catching fleeting moments of time, worked perfectly for this series. Not only did it exhibit the restraint from overburdening the reader with details and day to day minutiae that would have slowed the story down, it also gave a better feel to the narrative. ( )

I initially loved this series, but when I got to this book I found myself severely bored with everything going on. I love Janie and Cabe, but most of the novel I had no clue what was going on and I didn't understand why things happened and the background to why they happened.

Janie learning about her father was a wonderful plot twist, but she barely interacts with him or anything involving his life. It felt as if he was just thrown in for a plot twist and not used to the full potential.

There was no action, adventure or romance in this novel that made me feel like I should continue reading the book. Overall, it felt like a cheap final book in the series. I had high hopes for the book finale, and I was sadly let down.

I did love the first two books in the series and I hope Lisa continues to write books as good as the first two. This book was a let down for me.

I especially did not understand Janie getting handed an envelope near the end. I have so many questions about this book that were left unanswered, and without another book in the series, it's very disappointing. ( )

hings should be great for Janie - she has graduated from high school and is spending her summer with Cabel, the guy she’s totally in love with. But deep down, she’s panicking about how she’s going to survive her future when getting sucked into other people’s dreams is really starting to take its toll.

Things get even more complicated when she meets her father for the very first time—and he’s in a coma. As Janie uncovers his secret past, she begins to realize that the choice she thought she had has more dire consequences than she ever imagined. ( )

An interesting third novel, and an interesting approach to concluding this powerful and thought-provoking trilogy. As many other reviewers have said, McMann slows the pace way down, abandoning any detective plotlines or suspenseful thriller scenes. I was disappointed at first, but it actually seemed to work quite well, at least for me.

Here, Janie is taught the hard way that the most difficult and frightening problems to face have nothing to do with drugs or criminals; they are much closer to home. With the very core of her relationships being tested, Janie is forced to confront the bitter dilemma that being a dreamcatcher presents. Having such a painful choice to make opens up all kinds of tough, growth-inducing scenes that are, in their quieter way, as breathtakingly honest as the previous two novels. Perhaps that's the element I love most in McMann's trilogy; her simple, moving style that conveys everything in blunt sentences that nevertheless hold brutal truths and gut-deep emotion.

In the end, Janie's story comes to a close the same way; hopeful, bittersweet, and with a kind of candid realism that is amazingly refreshing. It felt totally true to the rest of the series, and therefore was a strong closing. ( )