"All Kane Montgomery knows for certain is that the police found him half-dead in the river. He can't remember anything since an accident robbed him of his memories a few weeks ago. And the world feels different—reality itself seems different.

So when three of his classmates claim to be his friends and the only people who can tell him what's truly going on, he doesn't know what to believe or who he can trust. But as he and the others are dragged into unimaginable worlds that materialize out of nowhere—the gym warps into a subterranean temple, a historical home nearby blooms into a Victorian romance rife with scandal and sorcery—Kane realizes that nothing in his life is an accident, and only he can stop their world from unraveling."

Things I liked about this:
-Poetic narration
-Drag queen sorceress
-Nuanced friendship and romance.
-None of the characters were straightforward; everyone was complex and mostly engaging.
-It's very gay.

Problems I had with this:
-If I was supposed to understand what was going on with the reveries, I didn't.
-I felt like I was being bounced between the main plot and backstory. Because Kane's memory was wiped, a lot of the book was devoted to backstory and exposition.

Overall, this was good, but I was disappointed.

Reverie started out with a pretty interesting mystery and with a lot of The Dream Thieves vibes, but things sort of took a bad turn after the first few chapters due to the lack of character and world-building development. This was a really unique and creative world that La Sala created with the reveries and twists and magic, but the actual story gave very little in the way of explaining why everything was the way it was and how it all worked. La Sala introduced a lot of new vocabulary without a clear explanation, so a great part of the novel was downright confusing.

There was quite a bit of action, which was well written and engaging and tension filled, but it was a bit hard to connect with and believe the characters were in any real danger since all of them are pretty flat. I think this was mostly due to the fact that Kane had amnesia — he was a blank slate when it came to most of the characters in the story — so La Sala didn’t take the time to make the side characters feel like real people since Kane didn’t remember them anyway. The one exception was Poesy.

The comment above was especially true in regard to Dean, the love interest. I would say his background was more developed than the others, and also intriguing, but he had no personality to speak of. This made the romance have no impact whatsoever since there was no substance to Dean as a person. He felt a bit like a prop, just there to kiss Kane and make him remember certain things.

In the end, Reverie was a quick and fast read, but confusing and undeveloped. The action was good and the premise was very creative yet the execution could have been more fleshed out. La Sala did show promise with this debut, so I hope to see more things from him!

Ryan La Sala has created an impossibly cool, dangerous fantasy world that blends reality and the stuff of our dreams into one wild ride of a book. I was immediately drawn into the mystery of Kane’s accident, and the following discoveries and events kept me turning page after page long after I should have already been asleep. Every single character felt real and true with their own struggles and personalities, which only added to the stakes of the story as tensions soared and danger loomed in the not-so-far distance. Most importantly for a book like this, the world-building of Reverie is breathtaking; every reverie Kane and his friends enter is intricate, unique, and downright terrifying. La Sala has successfully created a thrilling LGBTQ+ fantasy that the YA world is sorely lacking.

I just couldn't get into this book at all. I read a couple of chapters and it wasn't really appealing to me but I pushed on, as I had read some of the other reviews and most seemed to really enjoy it. I got half way through but it would have been a struggle for me to finish.

It just wasn't for me, sorry.

This book is so much fun! I loved the characters, the world, and the story. Highly recommend it. Four out of 5 stars for this awesome book!

I don’t know why I pushed myself to finish this book to be honest. I liked the time spent in some of the reveries, but overall the story was far too confusing to comprehend.

Kane woke up one day from an accident, missing a lot of his memories. He can’t remember the crash that put him in the hospital, or what caused it. And yet, it seems these memories are vital in understanding what is happening in his town. People are trying to find out what happened to Kane, and he needs to know what his relationships are to this mysterious group in school, a group called The Others. And what exactly are the reveries?

I received a free advanced reading copy of Reverie in exchange for an honest review.

Reverie is a fantasy YA novel by Ryan La Sala. It’s La Sala’s debut novel, and it’s also an #OwnVoices novel featuring LGBTQ themes specifically. La Sala actually got his start through #DVpit, which I thought was really cool.

Reverie was a good mixture of being plot- and character-led. Several times the plot leads the characters down a specific path, but then Kane is such a stubborn character that he has to have his way, and in his turn twists the plot around himself. It seems like they constantly struggle around each other, and the story’s pace kept me interested from the very beginning, even before I found out anything about the reveries.

Speaking of the reveries, they definitely needed some more of an explanation than we got. They were fantastic and amazing, and while I could see them being created from people’s heads, what I really struggled with was where they came from. There’s a lot into the reveries here that makes them seem like a natural thing, something that just happens out in the world, but I had a hard time believing that, and not because this was a novel that takes place in our current world with some elements of fantasy. What bugged me was that Kane and The Others had as a task to protect other people’s reveries and make sure they recovered from them, but what about the rest of the world? Do they also have these protectors? Where do the other protectors come from, if so? Why did these four remain lucid when everyone else was out of it? The story was compelling, but it left me with more questions than it answered.

I have to commend La Sala in his creation of the reveries. Their differences, the way they are formed around various characters, and even the way they’re described, it all was amazing and painted pictures into my brain, bringing the reveries to life for me as they came alive for the people inside the book.

I had a fun time reading Reverie, despite the questions it left me with. It was a very imaginative novel, and it took me on a great bunch of adventures.

Reverie will be released December 3, and you can pre-order it from Sourcebooks Fire.

REVERIE is a delightfully hilarious suburban fantasy where teens must use their powers to enter and shape dreams to save East Amity, Connecticut.

After Kane survives a car accident that destroys a historic mill, he can't remember anything. His parents and the police don't believe him. Kane is tasked by psychologist Dr. Poesy to write down his dreams as they might reveal what actually happened. As a result, Kane finds himself questioning what is reality and what is fantasy. Things don't seem right in his suburban Connecticut hometown.

Once back at school, Kane is prickly, an outcast and doesn't believe Ursula, an unpopular member of the field hockey team, that they're friends. Because of Ursula, Kane finds out he belongs to a group called "The Others," who have the power to protect dreams or reveries come to real life. Each of the Others - Ursula, Dean (a hot jock), and Adeline (the Queen Bee) - have special powers within reveries. Kane's ability is still a mystery. Through reveries, Kane and his friends travel into a football player's hero fantasy and into a Victorian wedding gone awry. The Others learn that their abilities are not an accident and that the reveries are part of a nefarious plot to alter reality.

Ryan La Sala has created a vibrant and magical world in suburban Connecticut - shocking, I'm sure! Some reviews have mentioned that Kane is not always likable, but what high schooler is? Feelings of being an outsider or "uncool" sting and Kane is also recovering from the double trauma of a car accident and memory loss. La Sala does an excellent job of taking high school stereotypes - the jock, the Queen Bee, the weird kid - and giving them layers of personality and feeling. Kane as a protagonist also grows throughout the book and recognizes how he can be kind of shitty sometimes. These teens discover that solving problems often creates more challenges and how much we need honesty and transparency in friendships.

There are many other things that I love about the book. The villain is multidimensional and a terrifying genius! Kane's love interest! A member of the Others secretly pining over another! Kane's sister Sophia as sibling goals! Ursula's stress baking! All the queer representation!

Most of all, I love that REVERIE is a love letter to suburban Connecticut. Readers from the Nutmeg State will have fun trying to guess La Sala's inspirations for different places. La Sala and I grew up 20 minutes a part and a lot of his novel reminds me of my time at a public high school in the state. Square-dancing in PE was a very real and traumatic event! I also appreciate that Connecticut is not treated as an extension of New York as it often is in novels but as a distinct place with its own identity and quirks.

TLDR REVERIE is hilarious, queer, very Connecticut and I can't wait to read La Sala's next book!

DNF @ 60%

I don't think I can get through the rest, the book isn't bad but it's my fault for not reading it for two months and now that I picked it up again I'm not invested anymore. But I can also say it's definitely not the type of book I enjoy so maybe there was a reason for me to not want to continue it all these months. There was also a comment that didn't sit well with me about a side sapphic character. I decided it's best that this book and I part ways now rather than later, but I definitely think there are people out there that this book is for and will enjoy it.

This book was indeed very delightfully gay, and I am HERE for it.

YA fantasy has progressed in recent years – it’s gone from not even acknowledging the existence of LGBT+ characters to including one (and sometimes more) as side characters, and even main characters. There’s often hints of a non-straight relationship in the background, less often as the main relationship. But none like this book, where nearly every character and relationship is LGBT+ and this isn’t treated as something odd, but as something too often looked down on but worth celebrating.

La Sala approached every detail of the story with a “That’s good, but let’s make it gayer!” mentality. It made me love the book 100 times more.

The memory-loss plot is not one I’ve come across often in YA books, and I enjoyed the mystery of it and the slow revealing of the layers of the story. I also greatly enjoyed the Reveries, and the way La Sala pulled in tropes from many different kinds of stories (dystopian futuristic, regency romance, barbarian sacrifice, superheroes) and then subverted them with the plot twists and the way the Reveries were resolved. I did get a little confused a few times, but that’s to be expected with a plot as twisty as this one.

I wasn’t as connected to the characters and story as I wanted to be early on in the book, but I think that’s a side effect of viewing the story through the eyes of a POV character (Kane) who had lost his memory. He didn’t remember his close relationship with his friends, or the events leading up to his memory loss, so I was discovering it all right alongside him. And I did feel connected to the characters by the end, and felt like they had enough depth - it just wasn’t apparent until later in the book.

I love the way Kane wasn’t sure of himself, and didn’t remember his past motives for his choices, and was tempted several times to just give in and run off into a fantasy of his own and hide from reality – but he kept showing up anyway and fighting to make the world better.

Ursula and Dean and Elliot and Sophie were wonderful. I wasn’t sure about Adeline at first, but by the end I appreciated her much more.

Poesy was wonderful and terrible and I didn’t know how much I needed a drag queen sorceress trying to replace reality with one of her own making.

There was also a delicious amount of detail in the Reveries, and in Poesy’s reality and person, and it made the story that much richer. Also, I can’t stress enough how much I appreciated the way La Sala approached every detail of the story with a “That’s good, but let’s make it gayer!” mentality. That’s still far too rare to find in published fiction, and it was wonderful.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital ARC of this book.

recommended for: anyone who wishes YA fantasy were just a little bit gayer. Or a lot gayer.

The plot of Reverie draws you in from the very beginning as you start out with the main character’s POV right after a mysterious incident and the loss of his memory. As you being to meet more characters you are left wondering what is real and who to trust, I just had to know how it ended! I enjoyed the premise of Reverie’s and the overall story line but the characters and world building are where I struggled.

I found the characters, especially the MC Kane very immature and tended to fall back in rushed and repeated emotions. I would have enjoyed the book much more if the characters acted more mature and had been built out more. There were hints at complex characters with complicated pasts that defined who they were now, there just was no real chance to get to know them in the single book.

The book was really focused around one part of a larger issue. I feel they won a battle but were not even sure what the war was just yet. There were also a lot of questions let open about how the Reverie’s and Posey came about although room is left for more books in the same world that might explain later.

Thank you to Net Galley and Sourcebooks Fire for a copy of Reverie in exchange for my honest opinion.

3 confused stars

I feel like I simultaneously understood this novel and completely lost the plot.

Writing: ★★★★
Plot: ★★ 1/2
Pacing: ★★★

I wanted so, so badly to love this queer-driven novel that marketed itself as a Inception meets The Magicians. Some of the reviews of Reverie are works of art in their own right, they read like this book is a thrill-ride, a rollercoaster of imagination, and a complex story filled with heart.

I both understand where they are coming from and wish that I had read THAT novel, the one they're describing. I feel like we're reading different things.

Reverie follows the story of Kane Montgomery, a gay high school student who was involved in a mysterious flaming car crash that somehow led to his long-term amnesia. Our entrance to Kane's world is, in essence, Kane's entrance into his own world as he's not sure what's going, on while we're not sure what's going on. (Can you feel the Inception vibes?)

Oh, and things are getting pretty trippy around him, including shadows coming for him in the real world and shady police action.

One of Reverie's selling points is its intense visual imagery and descriptions. I could feel every emotion, and vividly see each setting. Sentences were clearly constructed with care, and oftentimes distracted me from the plot of the novel as I read a sentence that was so unique ("Kane thought of the frustration that boiled through him--fine and corrosive, like soda bubbles") that I paused in my read to get a grip on its imagery. It was beautiful, but distracting. And indicative of a larger problem for my reading experience--I found too many things distracting, which really hampered my ability to get into the plot because the distractions obscured the plot, and then when I did get into it the plot itself was extremely confusing.

What, exactly, are the boundaries of a reverie and how do they work, logistically? I'm still not sure. They were visual masterpieces, an artistic playground for verbal description, but overall I was asking myself the why and the what way more than necessary.

Overall, I think Reverie is a singular novel, and an important touchstone in the realm of YA queer fantasy. I wish it had been more grounded and filled with scene transitions that explained some of its ethereal concepts, but as some readers loved that quality, it might be a me problem. I can guarantee this: you'll never read a book quite like it!

Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire via NetGalley for an eARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

When I first read the description of this book, I wasn't overly interested in it. It wasn't until I started reading the book that I fell in love. There is one quote that hit me in particular that would be perfect for the back of the book:

"Oh, you know, I fell into the path of an omnipotent, dream-harvesting drag queen, and now a pair of aging lesbians have be quarantined in the form of kitschy jewelry, and even though we're all a lot safer for it, my friends hate me!"

Had I picked this up in a store and seen this quote it would have definitely peaked my interest. It is not often that you get such a unique creative story that you don't know what's going to happen. At first I wasn't sure what I thought of the book, however the more I read the more I wanted to know what happened to Kane. This will definitely be one of my tops to suggest to anyone looking for a good book filled with twists and turns!

Rating: 2.5 Rounded Up/5 Stars

I received an e-ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was really excited when I heard this book was an Inception meets The Magicians and had LGBTQ representation but for whatever reason I just couldn’t get into it.

Let me just say that I read a lot of YA fantasy and I cannot think of another book that is even remotely similar to this one. It’s so bizarre and the writing itself is gorgeous. Ryan La Sala has such a strong voice and I think there is a lot of potential here.

I had such a hard time wrapping my head about the reveries and the characters felt a little flat at times. I don’t know if that was because the main character, Kane had amnesia was a bit of a blank slate and didn’t remember any of the side characters so we never got to learn much about anyone or what. I just would have loved a little more character development and world-building. La Sala created such a unique world but the actual story didn’t give much in the way of explaining why things were the way they were or how things worked.

I thought the action within the story was really well written and tension filled, but it was a little hard to connect with the characters in those moments. I think that just comes back to character building though.

Ultimately, this was a quick, fun read but it was just too underdeveloped for me. I do think La Sala is super creative and I hope we see more things from him in the future.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. My few problems more land with me expecting it to be something it wasn't. I loved the world of the reveries and wished we had been able to explore those. I also felt that I didn't connect with the characters outside of the main character enough.

Overall I still had a fun time with the book, I was just hoping for more from it.

Throw in The Magicians and I'm already in line to read the book. I was lucky enough to get an eARC to read the story when it was available on NetGalley. First and foremost, this story is completely unique, never before seen.

Would you believe it if I said that I first debated whether or not I actually wanted to read it? At first, I thought the whole magic system sounded a bit complicated and would be to much for me. I was not even sure if I would be able to understand it. After deciding to read the story because the ideas of it sounded cool, I quickly realized that everything worked fine and I was completely wrong. The magic system La Sala conjured up works perfectly as there is a reason for everything. I ended up liking everything that has to do with the Reveries. I even started thinking what mine would be.

There's a sense of mystery throughout the entire story and it plays out really well while Kane figures out what Reveries are and how they work. There's a lot going on, but it doesn't get mixed in together where it would get messy. Between the Reveries the figuring what happened to Kane, each plays out without without taking over the other. At the end, it is all worthwhile to see it as the story take its time playing each out.

Review will be posted on Keep Reading Forward (blog) on 11/30/19

Overall, Reverie is greatly unique and creative and definitely worth the read. I had a blast reading it from beginning to end. I definitely wish that there was a sequel because I'm sure it would've been amazingly good. We need more Reveries!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Reverie started off with our main character, Kane, surviving an accident, and searching for the memories that he lost in the process. i started reading this book around halloween, so I was looking forward to a witchy plot that I thought was going to happen because Kane loved to read "the Witches', it was a New England setting, and there were hints of magic while Kane was searching for what he had lost.
But, despite my original disappointment, this book came around and I ended up enjoying it a lot! There is magic (just not witches) that Kane and his friend wield for good against the evil that wants to destroy their entire reality. There’s a lot to love about this book. The characters are all unique and lovable in their own way, there’s a cute gay romance, and some really awesome settings provided by the different reveries that the Others have to strive to unravel.
You should definitely check this book out as soon as you get the chance! It might just be your cup of tea if you enjoy magical young adult storylines!

Firstly I loved that the main character was gay, the LGBTQ community has been needing more inclusion in YA fantasy! The story was so imaginative and creative, the only issue I had was the the Reveries could be confusing at times. But I really felt connected to Kane as he tried to navigate his way without his memories. I would definitely recommend this novel to others (and I will) but its possible that it is a "read twice to understand some stuff you missed" type of novel. And I have yet to get around to a second read.

Imagine a world where imagination could bring fantasies to life. No matter how terrifying it may be, I would give anything to be there!

This book started off for me a little difficult. I loved the premise, I thought it was a great idea, and was hooked on that immediately. It was Kane that I found difficult. He was a difficult character to root for in the first half, feeling almost whiny as he tried to figure the world out. After experiencing the Reverie’s and delving into his backstory and the world, he got significantly better, and my love of the story overtook the less than pleasure I felt about Kane.

The creative world of the book, with an evil drag queen and her dog, as well as a bunch of teenagers forced to stop the onslaught of ‘reveries’ before permanent damage is done, really sucked me in (haha, get it). I found it a world I enjoyed even just reading about, and the references of books I’ve read myself was a nice touch.

I had some trouble with Kane’s powers as well. I thought everyone with the powers touching on their doubts and weaknesses was smart, it worked well, and I enjoyed it. Then there was Kane. If Kane was in the closet, or doubted his sexuality, maybe I would be more understanding, but as it is, having him be able to shoot rainbows out of his hands felt excessive. There’s a fine line between representation and making a caricature, and there were some moments with Kane where I felt the book was teetering towards the later.

But like I previously mentioned, the second half really sold the book for me. It got infinitely better, with the addition of the truth behind what was going on, all the battles, and even the act of failing. I thought the way it worked out to be excellent, and the fact that the ending seemed almost open a little, as if hinting there may be a sequel, had me curious.

I would definitely recommend this book, despite my reservations about some aspects, as the others in my opinion make up for it. I’d also definitely be interested in reading any sequels should they come this way, or even just any other books Ryan La Sala writes. I think it was a good debut, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

I've not read a debut this good in such a long time!

Reverie follows Kane Montgomery after a car accident left him with amnesia. He's just trying to get his life back together and get through high school but he starts to notice that something just isn't right...

I won't lie this is one of the gayest novels that I've ever read and it was pretty dang magical. The world is rich and reminds me of a rainbow but only with words. The characters are well developed and the idea for this novel... I love anything with alternative timelines or reality and this really fits that with the reveries. I loved the Others and learning more about how all this works and the world-building.

I won't give away anything so it's hard to gush about all the stuff that I want to talk about but this book is amazing! If you were on the fence about it just jump over and buy the book, you'll be so pleased with this story.

I was given this novel in exchange for an honest review - Thank you!

P.S. That cover is so beautiful that I can't even!

(Will go live on my blog: 11/27/2019)