Please note: I received a copy of DREAMING OF DANIEL via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the publisher and author.

DREAMING OF DANIEL gets 4 stars and here is why:

It’s a frenemies romance with a friends to lovers twist and then, another twist!

J.M. Admore created a fascinating world where mer-males can change between swimming in the sea and walking on land as “walkers” but females must choose one lifestyle or the other. Daniel and Ava fall in love, but these lovers must choose which world to live in and that’s where things get very interesting and I had a hard time putting the book down. I just had to know how it ended!

DREAMING OF DANIEL is an awesome, quick read and perfect YA fantasy book. The pacing is good, the characters relatable, and the chemistry is out of this world. Literally. At times, I felt that the dialogue was a bit stilted as though young people were speaking too formally (like from another time period but then there were pop references so I knew that wasn’t the case), but other than that minor issue, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

If you like young adult romance with a splash of fantasy, this book is for you.

It was beautiful book that I have read in a while

I didn’t expect the end
The characters were so Amazing to read

Here’s the thing this book is a bit of a mess but it’s one that I think with more time and/of development it could have been something somewhat enjoyable.

The writing itself seems almost amateurish but when it comes the dialogue the characters themselves speak in a way I’ve never see actual humans talk, the 9 year old was talking like a full blown adult and then that same character years later acted like a child it was a strange fluctuation between the two qualities.

A big portion of the mythology here is that the Mer were under the oath of a treaty after a fatal ship wreck but unfortunately the logic of that was flawed because it was apparently something that happened within the main character’s father’s teen years, yet when you looked at the overall construct of the society it was presented as though it happened far earlier in time with so few remembering they were once a thing which really doesn’t fit in a timeline.

I don’t know this book needed a few more rounds of editing and drafting in order to at least get some of the plot and time line inconsistencies fixed but even then I’m not sure if that would have saved it.

*thank you to netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review*