This was scary in the sense that it feels realistic for the near future. Some science fiction is completely out there, but this one is not, which makes it connect. This one will definitely make you think and want to re read it.

What an eery novel! While it could be easily classified as dystopian, the lurking danger feels awfully familiar in our post-pandemic world. I usually struggle with books that have a clear agenda, but Lalami did a wonderful job conveying her message while keeping the reader engrossed in the story. You almost feel as trapped and helpless as the main character who sees no end to her time at the detention center—and that's all by design.

The book shows how unprocessed trauma, discrimination, and authoritarian governments can take something seemingly harmless—like preventing crimes before they happen—and turn it into a terrifying reality, especially for women and POC. It covers everything from female rage and immigration to AI, privacy, surveillance... so many topics! It would be a fantastic book club pick.

However, it lagged a bit in the middle, and I didn't love how often the timeline jumped back and forth, but these are small drawbacks for such an ambitious novel. I highly recommend it for those who can stomach reading it during the current administration. The hype is real! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my eARC copy.

I was excited to read this one as its premise sounded so intriguing, however I just couldn't get into it. The parts about Sara’s “arrest” and pieces of her life were interesting but then I got to something…no idea what it was. A report of some sort? Transcript of an interview? Not sure. At that point I lost all interest.
I wanted to like this book, but it just was not for me. DNF at 20%
Thank you Pantheon Books and the author for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

In a not-so-far-away world where people who are risk of committing crimes are sent to a “retention center.” This book felt like a nightmare as I was reading because it felt like it could really happen. It felt like a Black Mirror episode - almost skin crawling. I really did enjoy this in the end. I didn’t do much research on it before reading and it was slightly unexpected in a good way. A great read about surveillance and the ethics of it. This blends science fiction with the character development of literary fiction and a bit of thriller. Plenty of discussion opportunity for a book club (Hi Jenna’s Book Club!) Really enjoy the abstractness of it.

Thank you to Pantheon Books for the ARC!

Thank you to Pantheon Books and to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a review. I absolutely LOVED this book. Sara is a 38 year old new mother who is detained at LAX airport after being told her risk score is too high and that she is a danger to her husband based on the data coming from her dreams. There she starts to learn the ins and outs behind the retention system that has swept the United States in the past 20 years after a televised mass shooting caused legislative change.

This (not so) dystopian novel set in the not so distant future was so powerful and engrossing. I was instantly drawn into the book and the world building that the author creates. She does an amazing job of using multi-media at the end of chapters to move the plot along. This is a powerful commentary on AI, surveillance, and the privatization of prisons. It's a sort of 1984 meets Orange is the New Black. I can not recommend this book more.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC! This was genius, and is my favorite type of book, set in our world but with one or two huge differences that have multiple moral and ethical impacts on society. In this case, the Risk Assessment Administration which assigns a risk score to every citizen based on a very questionable framework, and an unknowingly nefarious brain implant that is supposed to help with insomnia, but ultimately is another way to gather data (and more.) This would be a great book to pick for a book club discussion, there is a lot here to talk about specific to how women are treated in society, data and privacy, and our current systems of incarceration. I loved this and it will likely be on my top list of 2025.

Thank you NetGalley for the early copy of this book!

I really enjoyed this book, following Sara through her struggle in retention. This book really speaks to things going on in the present, such as AI and how much data companies really have on us. Also important is the things we sign to use a service or join a social media site. This book to me is a crossover of Orange is the New Black with some Handmaids Tale elements... I would definitely recommend this!

DNF @ 52%

The premise for this book sounded so good, but the plot was slow moving and I gave up. There were also a lot of parallels to the US government that I don’t care to read about in fiction books.

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

With a title like "The Dream Hotel," you'd think this novel would've focused a little more on the dream aspect...

This novel had a unique and compelling premise, reminiscent to Orwell's "1984": Years into the future, the government has the power to detain people for crimes they MIGHT commit in the future, based on dream analysis, risk scores, and a variety of other factors. So when Sara is detained by the RAA at LAX for a risk score that is just a tad too high, she begins her entry into "The Dream Hotel," a retention center filled with seemingly dangerous women, cruel handlers, and an unyielding set of rules. Set one toe out of line--refuse to sign up for a job, talk back to the handlers, or make friends with the wrong retainees--and the RAA will extend your sentence, upon threat of higher risk, of course. When Sara begins to unravel the seedy goings-on at the retention center, however, she must make a decision: fight back against the system and risk her freedom, or continue following the rules and missing out on her newborn children and husband's lives outside of her reach. Will she choose the debilitating "safety" inside the center, or risk everything for a chance at freedom?

I powered through the first 25% of this novel, and loved every page of it. But then something happened: the narrative began to drag. Though the retention center is advertised as a "dream hotel," implying that retainees are going in AND OUT, almost no one ever leaves--at least, we have no idea if anyone leaves because Sara's perspective is extremely limited. The "dreamer" aspect is hardly discussed, as we only learn about Sara's dreams and not the other retainees', and Sara's dreams are shown once and never talked about again.

The novel's main focus seems to be the daily life of the retainees and their psychological states, though even this is hardly expanded on. I can honestly say I have no idea where half the book went. It seems as if the narrative got carried away on a plethora of side quests and never returned to its original focus.

The beginning was interesting, but the novel never truly engaged me or challenged the technological ideals it set out to.

THE DREAM HOTEL: 2.5 stars, rounding up.

Thank you to the publisher for the e-arc.

Very solid near-future dystopian premise, executed well. Usually these things strain plausibility and induce some eye-rolling but that's avoided here.

If I could give this book a 6 star review, I would. It is incredibly unsettling, realistic to a degree, and incredibly Orwellian. This is the only book I’ve ever had to put down because I was getting so stressed out while reading it.

Sara is detained at the airport because her risk number is too high, due to the fact she is having dreams about killing her husband. She is thrown in “retention” and needs to stay in retention until her risk number goes down.

The entire time I was reading this book, all I could think about was the thought police. Imagine if the authorities could use your dreams, which are often random, against you and deem you to be unsafe and dangerous.

This book explores the fact that in the modern day, we rely heavily on technology, especially when it makes life easier. We have no qualms about sharing our lives through social media. But as we give up our privacy for convenience, aren’t we losing our freedoms? Imagine your every action, every word uttered, every dream, thrown into an algorithm, which you have no understanding of, and based on that information, determines if you’re a risk.

“In any case, crime is relative, its boundaries shifting in service of the people in power.”

To me, this book is also is a critique of the privatization of prison. Inventing infractions does happen within the prison system as prisons make money by holding criminals for longer periods of time.

I used to think that recording my dreams would be fun, especially so I can show my loved ones the insanity of my brain, but now I’m not so sure I want that. If my dreams and thoughts can be criminalized, then I’m not really free.

While it is set in the future, it didn’t feel far from reality with AI and technology knowing us all too well, it was an eye opening look into surveillance, technology, the prison system, & profiling.

Four stars for the concept and writing. It was not hard for me to enter Sara's world, and I was fascinated by her day-to-day struggles in a "retainment center," along with those of her fellow retainees. The suspense builds the longer they are forced to remain and endure unfair treatment by the guards and frustrating answers from the higher-ups. As good as this novel is for the most part, as I got nearer the end, I feared an anticlimatic ending was coming. It did, and I felt the story deserved more. Still, recommended for the thought-provoking premise and compelling writing.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Sara gets off the plane, having just flown home from a work event, only to find herself detained at customs... then taken in to custody because her bad dream (that she couldn't even recall!) had put her risk score over an acceptable 500 (and because she mouthed off a little to agents, so, they weren't letting her "slightly over acceptable" score slide.)
So off she goes do jail, oh no it's not jail, its just a retention center, where innocent people are held for 21 days (more like indefinitely) to be observed to be sure they are not at risk of committing a violent crime.
Such is the world Sara lives in, not in the too distant future - I think it was set in around 2035, so only 10 years out. And boy they make it believable, this could totally happen, and some if already does!
So Sarah is caught in the never-ending loop of observation under retention at "the dream hotel" (one of the guards nicknames for the facility that is basically a jail.) The monitor her every move, thought, and dream.
She is in this place for nearly a year before she finally gets more creative and proactive on working to get herself out.
The story can be a little slow at points, secondary characters could have been fleshed out a little more, but all in all this was a pretty good book.
Especially powerful because of how easily this could happen!
I would say this falls under the category of dystopian fiction, although real life is looking more and more like this all the time!
3.5 stars, rounded down to a three due to the unneeded length, the abrubt ending, and the lack of character development for other characters.

The Dream Hotel had a promising premise but the execution did not live up to expectations. The writing is flat and clinical so there was barely any tension or build up to pivotal moment. The jumps between past, present, dreams, and reality all felt the same, blending into one bland moment. The new arrival, which was meant to be the turning point based on the book's summary, was presented with a new POV out of nowhere which ruined the overall reveal. The pacing was monotonous, the stakes were unclear, and whatever the motive is that is moving the story along never really gains traction. Then the second half of the book reads like an entirely different novel, with an entirely different main character, who is suddenly no longer passive and insecure but bursting with rebellion and confidence. Surveillance and corporate control are touched on throughout the book but not enough to make me feel like I should care, or relate it to my current day experiences. I think the writing is partly to blame here because I could not understand Sara's shock at being tracked so deeply when we are already conscious of it in our current reality in 2025. Additionally, the actual "dreams" of the "Dream Hotel" are barely explored, making them feel like fillers rather than having any purpose outside of reminding the reader that the company is, in fact, tracking your dreams. The rebellion arc at the end felt immature and hollow, but that might be the only consistent thing about the book since Sara has been immature and hollow throughout her entire life it seems.

Sara's personality got boring very quickly. She is deeply insecure, impulsive, and goes through a relentless loop of second-guessing every word, action, and thought that crosses her mind or passes through her lips (regardless of if she's feeling confident that day and even prior to being retained). She read like a confused teenager rather than an adult woman reflecting on serious personal and societal crises. Her shift to becoming a revolutionary came out of nowhere and even when she takes action, she is immediately second-guessing her actions which ruins any impact to the overall story and what she is trying to accomplish. Her strained relationships were boring to read through and the secondary characters were equally as flat. I stopped reading the names of the other characters about a third of the way through because it didn't matter who was speaking; they all sounded the same. My biggest issue with the writing of the characters is that in this world centered on surveillance and control, there was no mention of any critical skepticism or suspicion against the technology. It all feels naively thought out since, even in 2025, we are already wary of deepfakes and algorithm manipulation.

I think the book tried to cover too many issues in society (surveillance, corporate greed, the criminal justice system, race, gender, class, and privacy) and didn't give enough of a backstory or focus on any one for longer than a blink of an eye. There was an opportunity to explore the real question about guilt versus innocence in a world where algorithms and fragmented data replace trust and evidence. This is extremely timely in our world of cancel culture and AI bias, but the book presents these deep moral and societal issues with the lightest, briefest touch. The tone feels detached so a book that is meant to make us feel uncomfortable over Sara's incarceration, just feels normal and unremarkable given that we are live with the awareness of data tracking today. It's not a new concept.

Over the past few days of reading this book, my frustration grew with every decision Sara made, every injustice she had to face, especially as they mirrored real-world injustices.

Sharing dreams on social media? Can you imagine? Channels showcasing the weirdest dreams would skyrocket in views.

Now, I feel like reading something silly and happy.

Just couldn't get into this one. I usually like the Read with Jenna picks but I had to cut my losses at 40%. This was a miss for me sadly. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital and audio copy in exchange for my honest feedback.

"The Dream Hotel" is set in the near-future where the lines between technology, security, and liberty are blurred...

Sara Hussein was detained by the Risk Assessment Administration at LAX when returning home from a business trip in London. The RAA officer tells Sara that, using data from her dreams, the algorithm flagged her as a potential threat, specifically to her husband. For his safety, Sara must remain under observation at a retention center for twenty-one days.

After spending months in the retention center with other dreamers, all of whom are women trying to prove their innocence, Sara wonders if she will ever be free...

"The Dream Hotel" is a speculative fiction novel, and like most dystopian stories, this book is disturbing. It is thought-provoking and shocking enough that I couldn't stop thinking about it. With the jump in direction our technology is headed, this is a cautionary tale that feels frighteningly real.

This is also a character study of Sara, who is present or referenced in every chapter. Her plethora of emotions resonated with me, and I feel confident I would emulate her behavior under the same circumstances. Lalami's evocative writing leads you to believe that what is happening to Sara could easily happen to you. As an emotional reader, this book was an intense experience.

This was an immersion read with the gifted DRC and the Audible audiobook narrated mainly by Frankie Corzo, who recounts the story and whose voicing skills effectively capture the diversity of the characters. Barton Caplan's narration is limited to the reading of various reports and communications.

"The Dream Hotel" is an all-too-real and frightening glimpse into what the future of technology could hold. Key themes of predicted behavior versus fact, reality versus uncertainty, and unchecked monitoring versus personal privacy are explored. It's a perspective I enjoyed reading that nearly caused my brain to explode!

4.5⭐

Thank you to Pantheon Books and Laila Lalami for the DRC via NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

How do you love a book that is so dystopian, so creepily real, so scary? I was raging through all of it for these women. Mirrors too much of today's political climate, especially concerning women and immigrants. This "Retention Center" if it really wanted to help would offer counseling, therapy, etc. But as we all know, government facilities don't actually want to help solve problems, they want to make money off of people. Whether government or privately owned, prisons or "retention" centers aren't there to help, they are there to profit.
This book is one big "sliding doors" moment. If someone has the capacity to hurt someone else, that doesn't necessarily mean they will. There is always a possibility of violence, especially in today's landscape ranging from desperate people trying to save their families or red-pilled incels looking for revenge. This book wouldn't have been complete without an Octavia Butler reference so love that for her.
By a little past the middle of the book, i figured out they were implanting the dreams. Like everyone knows, profit over people.
Sara is amazing for not giving into Hinton. She had the consideration- the good of the many before herself- and that got her out of the center. I would love a sequel about Sara demonstrating and getting into congress to demolish the retention centers.
The women in the retention centers were inspiring. They are the perfect examples of necessity or creativity in this matter, is the more of invention. And I'm hoping that in this hellish fascist regime we are living through, that like those women in the retention center, beautiful art will be born of this time. But I still hope it is short lived fascism either way.

There was a lot to like about this book, with a lot of commentary on the future of algorithms and the prison-industrial complex.

"'You're not every woman.'
What a bizarre thing to say. Is she expected to behave exactly the same as every other woman in their database, or else she'll arouse suspicions? She is Sara Tilila Hussein. She's never pretended or even wanted to be anyone else.
Bu that is the trouble. The merchants of data who've spent decades building a taxonomy of human behavior find outliers troublesome. By definition outliers aren't predictable, which also means they're not profitable. Soon, their actions become aberrant, their ideas peculiar, their lives transgressive: they are delinquents."

3.5 rounded up. I think this probably could've been edited down (especially the unnecessary middle POV change that spoiled the reveal and added confusion to the themes already being developed). That being said, I was never bored even though not a lot happened. I've stumbled upon a lot of dystopian fiction lately, and this one does a great job of building tension and helplessness. Truly scary what-if questions explored here.

This released earlier this month, but I still wanted to thank NetGalley and the publishers for the early copy (my reading just got behind)!