Actual Rating: 4.5

I enjoyed this book so much! I loved this idea of reveries, when the subconscious of anyone can became real, making this book a interesting mix of fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and everything someone can imagine. I think it's a really original idea, and one of the things that make me love this book so much.

I like Kane and his friends very much. All their personalities are clear, and they all feel real to me. All the trouble they went trough, all the things they have to accomplish together, make them such a incredible group of friends. I love especially Ursula and her kind ways. Kane is a very troubled carachter, and though I questioned his decisions a lot during the book, they all makes sense considering all the pain and confusion he is facing. I like how he navigates all the information he is getting, and I also love his relationship with his sister, Sophia. She is such a smart person, so loyal to him, and all the secrets he has to keep from her hurts them both so much. But I like that they keep loyal to each other and to themselves to the end.

Poesy is an awesome antagonist! I won't speak much about Poesy, because I think that discovering who she really is and what she really wants is a journey in itself.

But even with all the fantastic elements of this story, I think there is a lot of interesting thoughts about being queer, about friendship, about love even, that are very important in our real world.

I totally recomend this book!

Actual rating: 3.5

Reverie is the story of Kane, who has recently lost his memories, as he finds himself pulled into other peoples’ dream worlds and has to help unravel them. This story has a lot of promise and I especially adored all the casual queerness, but in some ways this book dragged for me. The beginning when Kane doesn’t know what’s going on felt like the unpleasant frustration rather than an exciting frustration of anticipating reveals, so I had trouble staying motivated to keep reading. About a quarter in, though, things start to pick up as more about reveries are revealed and we meet The Others - Ursula, Elliot, and Adeline. I wish they’d been more fleshed out and there was more development with their friendship, especially in light of Kane’s memory loss, but I did enjoy the magic of them. I think my biggest disappoint is Kane’s relationship with his younger sister, Sophia. It comes across as they’re really close, but what I actually saw was a lot of distance between them and distrust and just it wasn’t a good sibling bond. It makes sense with events going on, but at the same time I felt things were too easily resolved with them because in the end they’re acting like everything is fine and we don’t get to see them work through the pain and distrust they developed while Kane was first coming to know of reveries.

I think this book had a lot of potential and is a great premise, but the execution felt a little lackluster in some ways. I think it’ll definitely be loved by many and it’s important that a book with so many openly, unashamedly queer characters exists, and I love it for that alone. I’m looking forward to more from La Sala because I think he has interesting stories to tell.

The premise of the story is fantastic; the execution,however, not so much.

The idea of belonging and not belonging is deep and definitely true to defining much of teen angst. It just didn’t work for me. The characters were uninteresting - maybe I was expecting way too much from the summary. I didn’t connect to any of them. The dialogue seemed forced and unnatural. While I appreciate the author’s imagination, the reverie world building was all over the place and really confusing. I usually read a book straight through, but I kept putting this one down and kind of dreaded picking it back up.

I’m sure there are others who will absolutely adore this book, but it just wasn’t for me.

2.5 stars.

I really wanted to like this book. It was a highly anticipated release and the premise sounded amazing. But the magic system was so confusing, the writing style tended to be a little over the top in some places and I got lost throughout the story. It’s very obvious it’s a debut novel, but I think with growth, Ryan La Sala could be a really great author.

I wanted to love this one SO badly because Ryan is an absolute gem on twitter, but this just really did not work for me. I had such a hard time wrapping my brain around the reveries and an even harder time connecting to the characters. Everything just felt disjointed and messy and I am SAD.

Reverie by Ryan La Sala is certainly unlike anything I've ever read before. There are a lot of great concept here that in some cases I wish were explored more thoroughly, but overall I had nothing but fun reading this and found Kane to be a very real and relatable hero.

The Good: The idea of the Reveries and the Others was very unique and certainly didn't fit any cookie-cutter YA formula I've ever encountered. Kane too was a unique hero in that he constantly has to battle with his own past, but it's a past he cannot remember. I loved Poesy as well and despite her questionable intentions, she was endlessly entertaining and a sympathetic villain in many respects. The Reveries themselves were fun and weird and incredibly creative. I just wish I'd been able to experience more of them.

The Bad: Reverie certainly needs at least one more copy edit before hitting shelves (there were many obvious typos and redundancies) but that is more just mechanical issues. In terms of content I felt the one thing I really missed from the story was a little more detail and more of a slow-burn to the solving of the 'mystery' of Kane's and the Others' identities. Some parts seemed a little rushed and I think it hurt the flow of the story in sections.

TL;DR: If you're looking for something unique and strange and wonderful, Reverie certainly doesn't disappoint, and the wide variety of real and relatable LGBTQA characters (while still not feeling like "forced inclusivity") made this novel a joy for me since I'm in that community. I look forward to Reverie's publishing so the world can experience its splendor.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the opportunity to R&R.

My thoughts:
HOLEY MOLEY.
I just finished this and Im having a hard time piecing my thoughts together. This book is so good!

This book had me at magical drag queens, but it is so much more than that.

The story begins with Kane trying to recover his memories after a car accident. From the get go I was hooked at the beginning the writing was flowery and overly dramatic and I got the sence that this was how Kane's innner monolouge is.

The world-building and the concept of the Reveries was compelling and complex. It was interesting how unique each one was for each person and how it all relates to ones thoughts and desires, and how a Reverie functions around those created stores and dreams but they can also twist into somethibg deadly

The characters where just as equally compelling. Each of their powers was an opposing reflection of them. I liked the complex nature of Kane's relatioship with them, your not quite sure who can be trusted. I also liked the dynamic between Kane and his sister.

The villian was the best part! She was dangerious from the moment you meet her she is a terrifying and imposing figure.....and fabioulus!!

As the story progressed I found myself wanting more, as Kane recovered his memories and the Reveries were explored each new discovery was just a tease to something greater to be discoverd and I loved it.

Also this book has some solid LGBTQ rep, Drag queen Villaness and Kane is Gay.

I totally recomend this.

I have been awaiting the arrival of this book since I first read the synopsis months ago and I am not in the least bit disappointed. It had all of the things I love and gravitate towards, fantasy, rainbow magic, drag queen sorcerers? But also a brilliant underlying message of reality and escapism, that’s what I took from it anyway. I think many lgbtq+ people can relate to a need to escape, building worlds within our minds where we can breathe and sometimes hide. It’s easy to hope and wish for a different reality, to dream one up. It is much harder to bend our current reality into something we don’t have to run and hide from. The plot to this story was brilliantly crafted and the characters all lovable in their own ways. I foresee this book becoming quite loved in the ya sci-fi/fantasy crowd. I loved it and can’t wait to hold it in my hands for real and relive the journey again! And dare I hope for a sequel? This really was a magical, thought provoking, dream of a debut for Ryan La Sala and I can’t wait to read many many more of his works to come!

A fun story about a young guy, Kane piecing his life back together after an incident occured that left him with no memory, and a criminal investigation.

Filled with queer+ characters, lucidity, and just plain whimsicalness- it was a gripping story!

I enjoyed the plot, and the romance arc was truly adorable!

Rating: 4/5

(This review will feature on my blog on December 24!)

This book came to me when I needed it most in my life!

Wow, where do I begin? To sum up this book? Upside Down meets Inception! La Sala created a whimsical world, and I loved it. I loved the characters, their depth, their quarrels, and banding together. I wasn't prepared for romance but I have to say I adored that part of the story, too. And yes, the drag queen sorceress as a villain...pretty epic in every fashion.

If you're looking for something weird [in the most fantastic way,] something different, something to draw you in, this is definitely it. I'm so sad for those of you who have to wait to read it!

I really loved the idea behind this story! I loved the reveries and the magic involved and how queer and beautiful this story was. I loved the friendship between Kane, Eliot, Ursula, and Adeline. I loved how they had formed this group to help other people. I love how each of their abilities were so well suited to what they needed and how the powers were the opposites of who they were. Kane was honestly a bit of a jerk protagonist half the time, but I loved his relationships. I love how close he was with his sister, how Sophia always looked out for him. I loved his friendship with Ursula and how they'd been friends since they were young. I loved Eliot and how he was always so nice and how he would correct people and was constantly the smartest person in any room. I loved Adeline and how she always did what needed to be done.

Dean was amazing and it killed me how he came out of a reverie and how he had to do what Poesy forced him to. I loved the bond between him and Kane and how adorable they were together. I loved them to no end.

Poesy was an interesting villain and I just loved her being a drag queen and everything about her as the bad guy, how Kane had looked up to her, how she was such a complex and amazing villain.

I wish we could have gotten to the magical part and explanation of everything a little faster, just because we spent so long wondering what was going on and not enough time getting to know the Others and Dean. I just wish we could have gotten more of them. But it was just such a good story and I loved all the characters and the bonds between them and how the Others work to save everyone and how they saved Helen and Maxine <3

It was a good book overall. I wanted to like this book much more than I actually did. I thought that the beginning was slow and it took me a while to get into it. There isn’t a lot of in-depth character development until you’re well into the story. The writing was good for the most part, but it didn’t really grab my attention the way I wanted it too. I still however found myself more and more into the book as it progressed. I just wish that the way it ended was the way it began.

I won't write a long review because I DNF this book at about 40%. I liked the creativity and the mystery elements, but it was too plot heavy and I found something about the writing style to be irksome. Reverie gave me "The Maze Runner" vibes, so I'll definitely be recommending it to younger teens, particularly boys. There's nothing wrong with this one, but it wasn't my thing.

I was over halfway through the book before I really grasped what was going on. That's an intense world (multiverse?) to build. The Reveries reminded me a little of The Good Place since the reverie would go haywire when something didn't go as it should. I could kinda see the resemblance to The Magicians even though it's a stretch. When Poesy and Kane had tea I thought of Dean Fog and for the rest of the book I imagined Dean Fog in drag (which would be amazing!) I believe the length of time it took me to understand the reveries took away some of my enjoyment and that is why I'm giving this 3 stars.

This was a very interesting premise with dreams coming alive but I feel it was not executed well. The characters where just, okay, they were lacking depth so ultimately I didn’t really enjoy them or connect. When I like a book I have a very, very hard time putting it down but I paused this book multiple times and read other stories in-between, I think many people will enjoy this book but it just wasn’t for me in the end.

I was provided with an electronic ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

In the silence of the night, a gay teenager decides to attempt against his life by crashing his father’s car against an ancient mill that happens to be the most cherished architectural piece of the city’s history. At least this is what the police reports had stated, and what almost everybody in town is saying about Kane Montgomery. But Kane cannot explain what really happened because he does not remember anything about that night.

After a fail attempt at getting his memories back, which involved both Kane and his sister Sophia to be chased by a shadowy creature; Kane ends up in the police station. Ready to face the detective in charge of the case, he gets really surprised when he ends up meeting Dr. Poesy (an extravagant, eyeliner lover man who happens to be a psychiatrist), instead. As eloquent and convincing as he is, Dr. Poesy finds his way into Kane’s life by promising to help him remember what happened.

But when Kane starts to remember who he was, how is he related to reveries and the kind of magical abilities he and his friends possess, he will learn in the most dreadful way that nobody is what they seem to be and that he is not as alone as he thinks he is.

How does Kane start getting back his memories? What kind of abilities are the ones he has? And most importantly, how are all these facts connected to reveries? This last question is the one I want to answer the most, however, this book is so nicely done that I honestly cannot tell you more about this without mentioning some major spoilers. You have to discover it by yourselves to really enjoy the fantastic experience of reading this amazing work.

This book is honest and assertive.  I have to congratulate the author, Ryan La Sala because he has managed to expose in the best of the sassiest ways how rotten our society is, and how we can inflict damage to the people around us without even notice it. Through the reveries that we will encounter within the chapters of the book, we will face the fear of being rejected by a society which rules are overrated and obsolete, but that is still so powerful that some people prefer to live inside their day-dreaming fantasies.

Besides exploring this concept of reveries to conceive this whole new fantasy universe, La Sala has also created a sassy antagonist who happens to be a drag queen sorcerer that has amazing comebacks, and who could smash you to pieces without breaking any of her perfectly manicured nails. But behind the mask of a powerful and deceitful queen, there is someone who just wants to change the world as we know it, to make it more tolerant and accepting at any possible mean.

What do I think of this book? Well, it is a colorful, enlightening and powerful story that will definitely kick up a big fuss with the help of a shady humor and astonishing style.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for giving me the opportunity to read this amazing book, it has been an extraordinary experience to be part of the Reverie universe. Kane and his friends will be in my heart forever.

A unique fantasy based in a magical world complete with a drag queen sorceress...how can you go wrong? I really loved this book. The characters were brilliant and the whole thing was just completely captivating.
Kane was such an intriguing MC and I felt connected to him from the very beginning. I really enjoyed watching him and his crew traverse and unfold the reveries. The reveries were amazing and felt like stories within the story. Such a unique idea. I couldn't get enough. And was sorely disappointed to discover it was a stand-alone.
I really liked that most of the characters were LGBQT it was a very refreshing change to have the main character as part of that community instead of just a supporting character. The fantasy and magic that is this story...I just...ahh. I'm all over the place with this review but it was just so good I don't know how to put it into words. I definitely recommend reading it. So good!

I'm still relatively new to this genre (YA fantasy) but I think this is a beautiful example. I read it in two sittings over the course of less than 24 hours. The characters were fully realized and I cared about each of them and how they worked together (or against each other) as the story unfolded. The imagination behind the "reveries" - what they are, how people interact with them and are affected by them - is wholly original. I'm really impressed and can't wait to read more from Ryan La Sala!

4 stars----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's just get one thing straight
this is about a gay wizard

.......


*INTENSE APPLAUSE AND WHOOPING*

i know
i mean
I KNOW

i love me a good gay time
but get this
it gets better

guess what comes out of his hands

...

f*cking rainbow blasts
RAINBOW BLASTS
are you f*cking with me Ryan la Sala??
are you???

So what's this book about?
Kane Montgomery has lost his memory due to an incident. As he struggles to piece together the memories he lost and the person he was he learns things about himself and the world that he can't understand. He and his group, The Others have the ability to enter Reveries. Reveries are worlds born out of peoples personal fantasies. He and the others have the ability to stay lucid during them. Their job is to unravel them before they manifest into nightmares.

An even greater threat stands in their way as a drag queen sorceress hungers for the power to create and control worlds. wtf should Kane do?

this book was everything
I loved it with everything inside of me. The only reason this is a four-star read and not a five star read for me is because I do not think this will become an all-time favorite for me It was enjoyable but not the type of book to stick with me and impact me in the long run.

It was fun and cute and pure and made me feel warm
queer books year-round baby

This book answers two big questions:
'What would happen if peoples personal daydreams/fantasies came to life and forced everyone to live out their fantasy?'
'Who are you if you lost a big part of your memories and so yourself?'

Kane starts the book with having lost a BIG chunk of his memories and trying to figure out what the hell got him here. The books starts of because of this with mystery vibes. He sees himself as someone sad and isolated, mostly because he's gay and because of that different. As a lesbian, the feeling of isolation and fear of others describes was very well done. However, apparently not everything about him is as normal as he thinks. First by the appearance of a mysterious 'psychologist' and second when he meets this classmates who turns out to know him when he doesn't remembers. Suddenly all sort of people who he doesn't remember show up and after hearing a group people who call themselves 'the outsiders' talk about him. The Outsiders are really funny to me because they do care about Kane, but they are also teenagers who handled a problem the worst way possible and are just like 'welp I guess we lost Kane forever that's so sad but what can we do reintroduce him nah we just move on'.

Anyways the book really starts getting interesting when the title drops and Reveries aka peoples fantasies get introduced. These parts really feel like watching a movie and are because of this really really fun. They work as concept and in the story and like I say are genuinely enjoyable weirdness. The world building is also surprisingly thought out. There is also something a lot of books are missing lately and that's a good villain. The villain is pure chaotic energy and power-madness and is enchanting to read. Another thing that's interesting is the theme of madness as concept in general (no I won't elaborate this because spoilers). I also liked that this book not only has a gay main character (who has a tiny romance), but there are two tiny f/f romances waved in this book which is always a bonus.

The reasons this isn't a full five stars is mostly some of the introduction chapters and the writing, the memory-loss part and the romance. A big thing this book does is that because of Kanes memories loss, a lot of things about Kane are implied and not shown. I get this is to easy the reader in and is a theme in the book, but it makes it feel a bit difficult to connect to Kane as character and the story. You also get thrown into this book with a weak first chapter, I think a prologue would add miracles to this. Romance is nothing wrong with but I just wasn't crazy about it (and had actually other ships I would like more that did not happen).

Other than that it was weird and random and magical just as I like in my book and I would definitely recommend.

I got and arc from this from Ryan and from Netgalley but this won't affect my honest opinion in this review