(This review can also be found on my blog The (Mis)Adventures of a Twenty-Something Year Old Girl).

When I first heard of Lucid by Adrienne Stoltz and Ron Bass, I knew it was one of those books that I definitely had to read. At first I thought I was going to be disappointed with this book, but it completely took me by surprise!

Lucid tells the story of two girls - Maggie and Sloane. They are as different as night and day except for one thing, they each dream of each other. As the story progresses, each girl falls in love and is afraid that maybe theirs is the world that is actually just a dream. The question is which girl is just a dream and which one is real?

Merriam-Webster defines the world lucid as "having full use of one's faculties: sane." I think the title of this book definitely suits it. Everyone around Maggie and Sloane think they may be going insane. Also, since this is a book about dreaming, Lucid works well.

I don't really like the cover besides the fact that it's shiny. Other than being shiny, the cover is a bit to boring and plain for my liking. I wish it was a bit more decorative instead of just a girl lying in a bed upside down.

The world building for Maggie and Sloane was fantastic! I love how the authors made each girl seem real and like their reality was the real one. It was difficult to tell who was real and who wasn't right up until the very end.

The pacing started out so very slowly for the first half of the book. In fact, it was so slow, that I felt like I was torturing myself reading it, but I really hate not finishing a book. Plus, I was hoping it would get better. Luckily, it get way better. It was almost as if I was reading a whole different book with how suddenly the pacing changed! I found myself reading the second half of the book like there was no tomorrow. It was just so good!!

I enjoyed both the characters of Sloane and Maggie. Although, if I'm honest, I did like Sloane a bit better than Maggie. Sloane seemed to be more grounded whilst Maggie was just a bit too all over the place for my liking. Plus, I felt more like I could be friends with Sloane. There are a few points in the book where the characters come across as being older then they are judging by their language. Plus, Maggie's seven year old sister sounded more like she was Maggie's age. I've never known a seven year old to speak and act like her!

The dialogue was a bit boring at the beginning of the book, but like the pacing, it definitely gets better in the second half. As I stated in the previous paragraph, there were times when the characters appeared to be much older than they actually were. I think the authors seemed to forgot how teenagers talk (as well as seven year olds). There's some acting terminology that's not really explained like the word "flunky" which I still don't know really what that means. There's quite a bit of swearing in this book, so this is definitely more on the side of mature young adult.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book even if the first half was painfully slow. The ending of the book was quite good and unpredictable albeit a bit confusing. I'm still a bit confused about the ending, but maybe that's just me.

I'd recommend this book to everyone aged 16 due to the language and themes. ( )

Wow. This book
Was so
Confusing.

Plot: 2.5/5
Not that the plot was bad. It’s just we had two different plots that had almost nothing to do with each other and whenever I got into one of them, I was pulled out of it and thrust into the other one. Takes me ten or so pages to get used to that, and the BAM!! Switch back. And this went on without either plot directly affecting the other until the last 20 or 15 percent of the book. Honestly, that is what made this difficult for me to read.
Also, lets just talk about what actually happened. The End, that last 20 or 15 percent, really threw me for loop. It got really trippy and weird.
And then, when we found out the reason for the WHY of this whole book… the reason seemed incomparable to the scope of what the character(s?) created here.
I mean, I’ve taken psychology. Twice. I watch that show, Brain Games. I know the Human Mind will do some pretty weird stuff to itself. But this seemed just a little out there, if you ask me.

Characters: 3/5
I’m going to talk about the character in two different categories, Sloane’s World and Maggie’s World.
SLOANE’S WORLD:
Sloane: Sloane here is the straight-A student from a small coastal town who also happens to be crazy. I didn’t really like her that much.
Gordy: WHY DIDN’T YOU CHOOSE GORDY, YOU STUPID GIRL???? HE WAS RIGHT THERE! LITERALLY!
Kelly: Best friend.
Lila: Best friend # 2.
Max: Cute little brother who’s not friends with Sloane anymore because she has cooties.
James: WHY??? WHY WOULD YOU CHOOSE THIS GUY????
Amanda: standard popular girl.
Bill: dead friend/boyfriend also the one who’s death is apparentl the CAUSE of the EVERYTHING.
MAGGIE’S WOLRD:
Maggie: The Actress from New York. Honestly, I liked her way better than Sloane. I feel like the characters and the back stories in her world were more realistic than the ones in Sloane’s world.
Nicole: Maggie’s mom who isn’t around much.
Jade: The cute little sister who parallels Max. Honestly, over the course of the book, I got to Jade better than Max. Because Jade had more face-time than Max.
Emma: The Psychologist. I liked her.
Thomas: Didn’t like him, never really did, even in the beginning when he was nice OMG, his one appearance in Sloane’s world: Creepy-tastic dude.
Andrew: Oh, he was so cool! Why couldn’t he have been real?

And I’m not even gonna talk about the romance, because was too many of and it was to confusing, but I’ll give it a 3 out of 5 grade, because Maggie and Andrew were pretty sweet.

Overall Grade: 8.5/15
That’s not a really good grade. I think that this book had an interesting premise, but it was executed wrong. It was trying to be all detailed and psychological, but it was far to complicated for me. And keep in mind, I’ve taken Psychology twice (once in high school, once in college)
Although, if I’m being entirely honest, I’m thinking that I might reread this someday. When I’m, like, 36 or older.
Because I know how it ends now and it might not be so frustrating if I read it a second time around, and if I’m older, I think I might be able to understand it better.

I feel like we got more face-time, more time to get to know everyone in Maggie’s world, which made them seem more real than Sloane’s and her world to me. not that, while I was reading, I actually felt like one world was more real than the other. This my after-reading, I’ve-had-a-night-to-sleep-on-it reaction. And also, blindsided that Sloane was the real one.

( )

Lucid has a strong speculative fiction premise, but this is not a book of speculative fiction. It is a young adult novel, written for a primarily female audience, which uses its premise to explore the human mind.

Like many of the reviewers, I also got bogged down by the sluggish pace in the middle of the book. Neither character had clear goals, outside of relationship drama, and the premise of changing every night was introduced and then essentially accepted without comment for most of the book.

Towards the end, this paradigm shifted, and suddenly the narrative picked up a great deal of energy. The last couple of chapters were pleasantly chaotic, and it took careful reading to pick apart the clues to determine what was really going on.

I'm not the intended audience for this book, but I am happy to acknowledge its strengths. Aside from the slow middle section, my only other quibble was the very last chapter, which left me unsatisfied. Yes, the reader now understands the twist and what has been going on, but we receive no closure on any of the characters we've met. I can assume that everything will be Okay from now on, but it would have been nice to see it.

An interesting read, and one that will stick with me conceptually. I don't think I'll be revisiting it, but I can certainly imagine recommending it. ( )

Lucid angered me for a variety of reasons. Though the premise was interesting and the writing was smooth enough that I didn't end up putting it down, it never really grabbed my attention enough. The two stories were completely separate for most of the book, and only when the girls' worlds began to overlap did I finally get excited about the story. Unfortunately, it was too little too late.

The characters themselves weren't terrible, but I got the impression that not enough of them made it onto the page. Sloane was a typical, high school-esque girl with very little defining qualities besides being meek and fawning over the hottest guy in school. Maggie, on the other hand, seemed like a bit of an easier character to sympathize with, although sometimes it felt as if I'd gone from reading a book about a 17-year-old to one about a 30-year-old. This was purposeful and handled pretty well, but it still threw me off in the beginning, when I wondered if Maggie would ever start showing her age.

As for the writing-- simple and easy to read, but unfortunately the writers relied too heavily on telling, rather than showing. Most of the scenes were filtered through the narration. Instead of showing the reader how a character reacts, often the MC will gloss over it and tell the gist of what was said. Due to this, the tension was lacking until the climax, but even then I felt the tension could have been drawn out throughout the entire story, instead of just throwing it all on you at the very end.

As for the overall story, it had its moments. It definitely focused more on the girls' love lives instead of the issue of their dreams. They're definitely passive about their situation, although they both fret over it constantly, neither really takes active steps to try and understand or solve the problem. Also, there was no force that drove the plot. The girls were simply expanding their lives to include boys, and all of a sudden that sends their delicate balance into chaos. It appeared like the writers were purposefully trying to be vague to let the readers draw their own conclusion, but it came across as weak and underdeveloped. The end also reminded me very much of Going Bovine by Libba Bray, only it wasn't handled as well.

All in all, I'd say this book is best for readers looking for a romance story with only a hint of paranormal. Those that enjoyed Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler or The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard might enjoy this. If you want a book that's more on the paranormal side, this one might not be for you.

Cheers,

-Katie ( )

This book was very different from pretty much anything I have read before! I just don't know how I feel about it. It is a book that makes you think, the story line so unusual and so gripping. I was totally engrossed, just needing to know what was happening. But the book was a complete mind trip!

Sloane and Maggie were opposite ends of the spectrum. Sloane is a good student, living with her family in Connecticut and crushing on the new guy. Maggie doesn't go to school anymore, needing the time for auditions, living a glamourous life in New York City. The two couldn't be more different. But when they go to sleep each night, they dream of each other, despite never having met. And this is where the mind bending comes in. Who is real? Who is a dream?

The story is told through the perspectives of each girl from chapter to chapter. We get to know each of them so well, two complete and distinct girls. But then when things start to fall apart near the end, it becomes almost impossible to separate them. Both of them stand to lose everything and it is impossible to root for one over the other. Both girls are vulnerable and good people and it is heart wrenching. The ending is emotional and perplexing, the kind of conclusion that is completely open to the reader's interpretation.

My Recommendation: This is an intense book, full of love and loss. It is a book that makes you think and I came with an infinite number of theories for why things were as they were. Who is real and who isn't? What is insanity and what is dream? ( )