This novel feels a bit like a bait and switch. While the plot is interesting and the characters are relatable, I assumed the story would be different or about something else. It ends up being a mix of Orange is the New Black and Lessons in Chemistry, but we were expecting Margaret Atwood and Octavia Spencer. With that expectation, the book is a bit disappointing; however, the story is solid if predictable. The characters were not quite as fleshed out as I would have liked and the ending was a bit underwhelming. An ok read.

The cover drew me in but the plot summary convinced me to read it. Like, imagine if our dreams were shared with others?! No, thank you! This was such an interesting look into technology, AI, and corporate greed. Sadly, this felt a little too real with the current state of the world. Sara was an interesting MC and had good growth throughout the story. The additions of emails, transcripts and reports made for a well rounded story that I definitely recommend.

rTHE DREAM HOTEL
BY: LAILA LALAMI

A woman who is a new mother to twins named Sara Hussein, and returning from a business conference in London that she has attended for years gets detained at LAX. Sara hasn't done anything wrong and just wants to join her husband Elias and her two twin babies who are there to pick her up. She has made a reservation at an exclusive restaurant and these officers are making her late, which turns out to be the least of her problems. They bring her to a facility since the Risk Assessment Administration has deemed her to harm her husband Elias A male Agent tells Sara that she has to go to the Inspection and Prevention because her risk score is to high. Sara gets questioned about an incident at Heathrow where an older gentleman was having a medical emergency to which she got him help from a doctor. The old man didn't want to exit the plane since he was looking forward to meeting family across the Atlantic. He took out his anger on Sara and that's the only reason she can think of why she's being detained. An algorithm flagged her as being at imminent risk she was told by the agent that is questioning her and took her passport at LAX in a room. She's beside herself and keeps telling them that she hasn't done anything wrong, but to no avail since the technology which are many different futuristic tools used that we're not far off from gives this a claustrophobic vibe to me as a reader.

The agent asked to see Sara's phone in which she had several apps, but he was scrolling through her photo gallery. She protested that she has no criminal record, no unpaid bills she is totally at a loss for why she is being detained. She's a museum archivist so she knows she's not a considered being included in the law breaking classes.

"RISK ASSESSMENT ADMINISTRATION.
The mission of the RAA is to keep American communities safe. We are committed to identifying risks and investigating suspicious individuals in order to prevent future crimes. Using advanced data analytic tools, we keep law-abiding Americans safe from harm, while also protecting their privacy. Our core principles are care, respect, and responsibility."

This novel is one that I ended up liking a lot more than I thought I would. This moves in a non-linear format as far as the narrative is concerned. Sara was told by the officer that returned to the room she's being held in that her risk assessment score came back as 518. Anything over 500 was flagged by all the data collecting software that she is a risk so she ends up in Madison for observation of 21 days. Cameras are always watching as well as video. I could feel how eerie the retention center was. There's all of these strict rules the residents have to follow, and breaking one results in more time spent under observation.

There's a visit from her husband in which he brings her twins and she really misses her husband and the 13 month old twins first milestones. She wanted to take the boy twin for his first haircut and preserve a lock of his hair in what I would refer to as a baby book. She asks her husband if he thinks she's guilty and he reassures her no. He tells her to keep her head down and follow all of the rules so she can come home soon. The atmosphere was grim and the food gross. She and other women are kept there longer. It's a meditative, intriguing story about technology and AI and this novel certainly examines that double edged sword and how relevant it has become in today's world. The creepy advertisements that follow me around on websites that I've wondered how that happens, but feels very intrusive is what I kept thinking about while reading this.

Using data from Sara's dreams, the RAA;s algorithm has determined that Sara's at a high risk which is ridiculous and they say that the people staying there, who are all women are trying to prove their innocent. A guard wrote Sara up for wearing her hair in a non compliant way. She has been written up for three reasons first: of which was her hair, the second time for resisting orders from the case manager. And third, for loitering in the hallway which she got an additional 45 days. She met with a lawyer who told her she had no prior arrests, worked a full time job, and is a mother. But the RAA had full authority to keep her in custody for forensic observation because the courts defined retention as precaution not punishment. Sara is still waiting 291 days for her release. There's a lot of content that makes the point of the residents not being in jail. but it sure felt like it. I think you get the idea of this residential bleak place that detained women that it sure feels like jail. The old school that these residents are staying in is more like an institution where residents have lost their dignity and if they don't eat the very sickening sounding food they get punished with adding more time in custody.

Sara;s the main character who alternates her thoughts into memories of her family. She remembered how Elias would purchase a new car without consulting her. She remembers traveling with her husband and also hikes they took, but as time goes on she feels a nagging feeling that Elias is becoming more distant. The residents have a handbook that provides what they can't do. There's a scene where Sara gets to call her husband, but just like jail her call gets shortened and the call ends because of the allotment of time allowed. This is a well written novel in which it illuminates this Author's talent of making you feel like you are feeling what these residents are. Will Sara get released or is she destined to remain there since she keeps getting additional days added? This is like a nightmare but will appeal to a wide audience. This turned out to be an immersive novel that showcases Laila Lalami's gifted skills and It's the first time I have read her work, but has inspired me to want to read her previous work. I'll be recommending this to every reader I know. As I said earlier I didn't think I was going to like this, but I was quickly pulled into the story. The Author has written a tale of humanity and how technology with all of it's glory has things that we all have to keep in mind how it can be considered that it contains drawbacks.






Sara of harming the person she loves the most: her husband Elias. For his safety she must be kept under observation for 21 days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers

.Publication Date: March 4, 2025

Thank you to Net Galley, Laila Lalami and Knopf, Pantheon, Anchor, and Vintage for generously providing me with an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#TheDreamHotel #LailaLalami #KnopfPantheonAnchorandVintage #Net Galley

This is Laila Lalami’s magnum opus. It’s quite relevant to the world we live in today, especially if you’re someone living in the US post the 2024 election. I was expecting a different ending or even a plot twist, but those things didn’t happen, which makes the book realistic in my opinion. It does have a little too much filler and it would have been a stronger story if it was 250 pages. Other than that, the themes of surveillance, the system being against you, how AI is causing more harm than good, and how prisons suck and should not exist make this book quite timely and I’m sure it will resonate with many people.

I think this book was good. I liked following the characters and found it interesting to see their development. I think the writing was good also. I was a fan of it and think it was a good concept and the writing was well rounded.

“The data doesn’t lie.”
“It doesn’t tell the truth, either.”

The Dream Hotel offers a suffocating vision of the near future, where America has become a Muskian technocapitalist surveillance state and AI dominates society. In this world where AI technology has permeated even our interior lives, Sara Hussein is detained after her dreams and biometric data have identified her as at risk of committing a crime. Despite her insistence of her innocence, Sara faces the system that technology built and confronts questions of identity, safety, and freedom, and the cost of convenience in a technological world.

The America Sara inhabits - one of rampant AI surveillance, "not prison" retention centers, raging wildfires, reproductive-age visas, and fifty-year mortgages - has clear roots in the issues and ever-advancing technology of today's society. While conceptually different, The Dream Hotel reads like a techno Handmaid's Tale, swapping out religious extremism for technocapialtalism and a sexual caste system for constant surveillance, risk scores, and indefinite detention. Both tell a bleak story of monitoring and controlling women's autonomy for the advancement of society.

Lalami says she started this story in 2014, picked it up during covid, and now with it's release in 2025 the story feels timely as ever, in an administration that daily feels like it's bringing us closer and closer to a reality such as this one.

Sara's story ended a bit abruptly, and I would've liked to delve a little more into her resistance against the system. But overall this was a disturbing, thought provoking read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon Books for the advance review copy.

In The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami presents a chilling exploration of a near-future society where personal privacy is a relic of the past, and even dreams are subject to surveillance. The narrative centers on Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American scientist returning to Los Angeles from a conference abroad. Upon arrival at LAX, she is detained by agents from the Risk Assessment Administration (RAA), a federal agency that employs biometric data to predict and prevent potential crimes. Sara is informed that, based on her dream data, she poses an imminent threat to her husband and must be confined for observation.

Lalami masterfully constructs a dystopian reality that feels unnervingly plausible. The RAA's reliance on algorithms to assess "pre-crime" tendencies raises profound questions about the erosion of civil liberties in the name of security. Sara's subsequent internment in a women's "retention center"—a euphemism for a prison—highlights the dehumanizing effects of a system that punishes individuals for actions they have not committed but are predicted to undertake.

The novel delves deep into themes of identity, autonomy, and the pervasive reach of technology. As Sara navigates the Kafkaesque labyrinth of bureaucratic oppression, Lalami prompts readers to reflect on the balance between safety and freedom. The narrative is both a cautionary tale and a meditation on the lengths to which societies might go to maintain order, often at the expense of individual rights.

The Dream Hotel is a thought-provoking and timely work that challenges readers to consider the implications of a society where privacy is obsolete, and freedom is conditional. Lalami's eloquent prose and nuanced character development make this novel a compelling addition to contemporary speculative fiction.

This unfortunately didn't live up to my hopes based on its description. Had I read Laila Lalami before, I could have felt differently. But this introduction didn't wow me.

I anticipated this being a page turner, something I'd want to fly through like I did with The School for Good Mothers (the best comparison that comes to mind). That wasn't the case. I was pushing myself to keep reading in hopes something more intense or big events to mark a change in pace. It felt very flat.

There was a sort of emotional intensity, but more in the form of misery and dread (about the circumstances of the book, not about having to read the book—obviously no one forced me to read it lol).

Laila Lalami is a very versatile writer. I have read and enjoyed her historical fiction novel The Moor's Account. Her latest novel depicts a near future dystopian world where, to prevent crimes, algorithms are used to rate risks from citizens, even using their dreams against them.

Sara Tilila Hussein, an archivist who works for the Getty Museum, is a young mother of twins. She's taken advantage of Smart technology and had a neuroprosthetic inserted to help her sleep, not realizing that terms in the fine print allow her dreams to be monitored and possibly used against her to rate her risk.

Just before Christmas, she flies back to LA from a business trip to London where she gets held up in Customs and Immigration. She's tired, hungry and worried about her husband having to circle the terminal with their 13-month-old twins in the car, while waiting to pick her up. Understandably she gets a little snippy and irritated with the Risks Assessment Administration officer she's been passed on to after an hour of these delays. He declares she's an imminent risk of committing a future crime and will need to be escorted to a detention center for three weeks for observation and evaluation.

Safe-X, Inc, the company who runs these short-term forensic observation facilities for the US government, earns money by employing detainees on various projects, so it suits them to keep finding ways to extend a detainees stay with them, including using a thick rule book with demerits for any small infraction, so the initial 3-week stay frequently turns into months with little contact with the outside world.

Sara is advised to keep her head down and avoid any unwanted attention from the attendants but that's almost impossible to do. As the weeks go by, she forms friendships with her fellow 'inmates' and we learn their stories as well. I really liked Sara and her indomitable spirit and could really feel the frustration and helpless fear this situation created. One surprising twist gives more insight into what is going on with the company behind this project.

In many ways this story is tolling a warning bell over how much Smart technology can erode our personal privacy and freedom even if used in the name of public safety. Big Brother watching over us. Sort of reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new novel via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own. I will definitely make a point of reading the rest of Lalami's books. I thoroughly enjoy her writing.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a business trip to London, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside. According to the RAA’s algorithm, it has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. Sara is transferred to a retention center where they hold all of the "dreamers" - all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

This book was not only gripping, but it was horrifying as well. In a way, it felt all too real, with the direction the United States is heading in, and the way women's rights are systematically being stripped away. This was a lot like Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale & Vox by Christina Dalcher in that regards, but also like The Circle by Dave Eggers in the way technology can sometimes do more harm than good. I kept alternating my viewpoint between Sara just towing the line so she could get back home to her family, or standing by her principles and causing chaos. It gave me a lot to consider, and I think this makes it excellent for book clubs. I highly recommend this one!

In the not so distant future, the government uses various means of surveillance to identify and prevent crimes before they happen. Sounds promising, but at what cost? The Dream Hotel is marketed as a thriller that follows protagonist, Sara Hussein, who has been flagged for having murderous dreams. In an attempt to prevent any future crime, Sara is held in a retention facility for 21 days of observation. Twenty-one days turns into months as Sara, and others, discover just how broken the Risk Assessment Administration really is.

This book had so much potential. Like others, I’ll say it gives Minority Report vibes with a little Orange is the New Black and Black Mirror rolled in. At times, it was thought provoking, with touches on AI/technology, immigration, racism, global warming, prison industrial complex, etc.

While there were some good bits, ultimately this left me unsatisfied. The pace was slow, the plot and themes were only surface level, and it was far from the thriller I expected. I think the book would have benefited from spending time exploring one or two themes/characters more thoroughly versus trying to half-heartedly mention so much. This needed characters with more dimension, any sort of “thrill” as promised, a stronger ending, and for a few loose ends to be covered.

Again, the premise of The Dream Hotel is an intriguing one. Give it a try if you like the idea of futuristic tech and the social implications of government surveillance. While it’s certainly not a thriller, it might be the perfect fit for someone who enjoys a slower-paced, introspective journey.

Thank you Pantheon Publishing and Netgalley for this advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

The rare case where such a compelling concept is backed up with such thoughtful world building and plotting. Pushes familiar ideas even further, and fills you with dread in every page with how easily this could be a reality. So many relevant themes to coincide with this release, so so timely. I felt that the multimedia type elements that broke up chapters were mostly not necessary, but some did provide crucial context. I'll be thinking about this one for awhile and recommending it to others.

Phenomenal. Eerie, stress-inducing, thought-provoking, and alarmingly, disturbingly plausible. I am still in shock by the brilliance of this moving piece of dystopian fiction.

"...it's the parasitic logic of profit, which has wormed its way so deeply into the collective mind that to defy lucre is to mark oneself as a radical, or a criminal, or a lunatic."

In the United States in early 2025, the experience of reading The Dream Hotel was equal parts page-turning and particularly dreadful. Capitalism rules our society, our lives are largely digital, mass incarceration is a core issue (as are for-profit prisons), and surveillance is everywhere. Every tech innovation promises to improve our lives, and we often sign up for new tech products and apps without reading the fine print. The benefit is usually explained, but the calamity, if a bad actor or unfriendly government takes control, is harder to fathom. In other words, our current society is the blueprint for the setting of Laila Lalami’s brilliant novel, The Dream Hotel.

The flip side of the fine print is what allows for main character Sara, who is stopped at the border on a return flight to the US, to be sent to a retention camp. The Dreamsaver was something new mom Sara had implanted voluntarily, as it promised her improved rest. However, it is also capable of storing her dreams, and the Risk Assessment Administration now uses that dream data to determine that Sara is at high risk of attacking her husband. The bulk of the novel is spent with Sara and the other “retainees”, as they work to follow the ever-changing rules that will allow them back into society. Each deviation adds time to a retainee’s sentence. On these shifting sands, the women at the camp struggle in every way.

I felt so much rage while reading this book, watching them try to fight their way out of incarceration for dangerous dreams. The way they were used by the system is already so familiar and this type of expansion felt both terrifying and very plausible.

As I have reflected on the book, I continue to think about how Sara and the others willingly signed up for a tech product that promised to improve their rest, and in doing so, ultimately paved the way for their own incarceration. Do we realize what we’re signing when we download an app? Do we know the flip side our own technologies? We must be vigilant in safeguarding our privacy and our digital footprints. The story is compelling, the plot is believable, and the lessons will stick with the reader for a long time to come. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Pantheon Books and NetGalley for providing this copy of The Dream Hotel for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

THE DREAM HOTEL by Laila Lalami ~to be published March 4, 2025

Many thanks to @pantheon for the gifted ARC! I was not previously familiar with Laila Lalami, but she is a past Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist!

Imagine:

There is a mass shooting at the Super Bowl with many casualties. As is often the case after-the-fact, the authorities discover many warning signs: angry texts, domestic violence complaints, online searches for how to bypass stadium security, and purchases of large amounts of ammo and bump stocks. In the wake of the tragedy, Congress passes the Crime Prevention Act, which gives authorities broad access to identify, through private data, people who are likely to commit violent crimes and detain them.

Seems extremely plausible, right? I actually wish we could have spent a lot more time on this part of the story (it was explained in just a page or two) because it was fascinating. So many aspects of our lives are already being tracked. Lalami asks, what if this data was used to predict crimes that we may commit in the future, and what if we could be legally detained just based on this probability?

Our story opens with Sara being held in a women’s “retention center.” She hasn’t been convicted of anything, but the data, including data taken from her implanted “dream saver,” suggests that she is an imminent threat to her husband.

I flew through the novel and really enjoyed it, but I do think Lalami made it too easy for herself. In her world, the data collection process is clearly flawed and the detainees are held in a broken, Catch 22 type of for-profit system* (see note below). Also, Lalami suggests that racial profiling has led to Sara being targeted. It’s not that I don’t find these premises plausible, but I think a more interesting question might have been, if the data collection was more accurate and unbiased, would it be morally ok to detain people for crimes they have not yet committed? Still though, I found the story to be extremely compelling, and would definitely recommend picking this up if you enjoy speculative fiction!

*Detainment is a looping Catch 22. The law holds that detainees are to be released after 21 days if their risk score has gone down. Because unemployment is a negative multiplier of risk score, they all perform unpaid labor while being held (helping film studios develop their digital effects). But because any minor infraction in prison causes their risk scores to go up, and because the guards are incentivized to keep the free labor, most detainees are held for months and months with no end in sight.

This book freaked me out, especially as someone who is often the “what are they reeaally going to do with our data” person. It’s an extremely interesting premise: a future where the government uses individual’s data, even from dreams, to assign “risk levels” to them to try to prevent crimes (instead of just passing gun control laws, obviously) and then detains people with high risk scores until they deem that they aren’t going to harm anyone. But of course, proving you aren’t planning to commit a crime is basically impossible, as the women in this book come to realize. Just like in a nightmare, the panic and urgency about Sara’s situation seems to mount as this novel goes on. It follows kind of a predictable pattern imo but I was still glued to it because it felt so believable and personal. It was very haunting and I definitely recommend it.

This book is our generation's 1984. It's a warning, a wake up call, and a horrifying look at our very probable future, thoroughly wrapped in page-turning narrative.

Following Sara Hussein as she is detained by the RAA whose predictive algorithm utilized data from her dreams to determine she was at an increased risk for committing a future crime, The Dream Hotel, weaves an impressively humane story while warning us about the dangers of giving away our data.

Future review to be forthcoming on Shoreline of Infinity.

Full review available: https://www.shorelineofinfinity.com/the-dream-hotel-by-laila-lalami/

"A riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance."

Summary: Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Review: Serious 1984 vibes. The Dream Hotel feels too real and not so dystopic given our current circumstances. That being said, world building needed more details.

#TheDreamHotel #NetGalley

Women are unjustly held in a retention center because their scores seem them as risks to possibly commit a crime later. The AI and technology were plausible but they were not explained enough. There were quite a few acronyms used which were hard to keep up with. Dreams are supposedly what kept most of the women in the retention center yet they don't talk about dreams much or what the government is trying to do with the dreams. A really interesting concept for a story but it didn't land as I was hoping.

4.5⭐️

The Dream Hotel
This felt like a black mirror episode inspired by 1984. I loved this!

In this book we are following our main character, Sara Hussein, in a not so distant capitalistic and dystopian future.
In this society, people's dreams and behaviors are highly monitored, and using an AI algorithm, people are given a "risk" score. If your risk score is deemed to be too high based on any of your day-to-day interactions, texting, dreams, and behaviors, you are detained in a retention center for a minimum of 21 days. We follow Sara through her time in this retention center. What she expects is a misunderstanding and should be a short stay turns into much more. Between the ever-changing rule systems designed to punish and the horrible conditions within the center, this book gave me so much anxiety following her journey. This book explores systemic injustice, and at what point are we motivated to fight back? How bad does it have to get? Do you just accept your "fate" and fall in line with the system?

Thank you, NetGalley and the Knopf, Pantheon, and Vintage catalog for this e-ARC. This book publishes on 3/4/2015.