In *The Dream Hotel*, Laila Lalami tells a gripping story about surveillance, technology, and human resilience through the eyes of Sara Hussein, a scientist detained at LAX after an algorithm flags her as a threat. Set in a near-future world where technology criminalizes subconscious thoughts, the novel explores the impact of systemic injustice, focusing on how marginalized communities are disproportionately affected by technological surveillance. Lalami's evocative prose creates a tense, thought-provoking narrative that challenges readers to reflect on the erosion of privacy and autonomy in an increasingly algorithmic society.

Sara has just returned from a trip abroad when she is detained at the airport by agents of the Risk Assessment Administration (RAA) I cannot imagine how frustrating this would be when all you want to do is see your family and relax in the comfort of your own home. They unfairly pull her aside based on her dream information. Hello, dreams are wonky and quite unreliable, with no way to control them - how very scary this would be! The RAA tells Sara she is at risk of committing a future crime so she must be kept under observation for 21 days, and they take her away. 'Observation' isn't prison, but it is similar to it, and the 21 days soon turns into months for Sara. The time spent at Madison is full of frustration. There are jobs to do and many rules to obey lest your risk score take a hit. Sara needs her risk score to drop before she will be considered for release back to her home. The Dream Hotel is set in the future and is quite scary as it seems like a scenario that could easily happen. The book is told entirely from Sara's POV with some mixed media inserted for context - emails, reports. and also Sara's dreams. The dreams helped put me into the world at Madison as I was never quite sure what was real and what wasn't.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Imagine a world where your dreams aren’t just personal reflections but potential evidence against you. Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel thrusts us into a near-future dystopia where the boundary between thought and crime blurs alarmingly.

The story centers on Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American historian and mother, who is abruptly detained upon returning to Los Angeles from a conference. Unbeknownst to her, a sleep device she used to combat insomnia has been monitoring her dreams. The authorities, relying on data from this device, accuse her of harboring subconscious intentions of harming her husband. This lands her in a “retention center,” a euphemism for a prison where individuals are held not for crimes committed, but for crimes the government predicts they might commit based on invasive surveillance.

Lalami masterfully crafts a narrative that is both unsettling and thought-provoking. The novel delves deep into themes of privacy invasion, the perils of unchecked technological advancements, and the erosion of civil liberties. Sara’s journey is a poignant exploration of resilience and the human spirit’s fight against oppressive systems.

The Dream Hotel serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences when society prioritizes security over individual freedoms. It’s a compelling read that challenges us to reflect on our current trajectory in the age of surveillance capitalism.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!!

What if nothing was sacred or safe from capitalism and public scrutinity?—Not even your dreams. In the world of this haunting novel, individuals are heavily policed and even incarcerated for the random bursts of stimuli the synapses firing in their heads produce. What we would deem random images and the narratives we create upon waking to make sense of them, this near-future reality decries as confessions of intent.

We follow a woman named Sara T Hussein so desperate to sleep following the birth of her child, that she tries out a new experimental sleep product. Failing to read the Terms and Conditions, she's arrested for intentions to commit murder... against her partner... due to her literal <i>dreams</i>. Far-fetched yet still hauntingly close to our own surveillance state, Sara is sent to a compound with a myriad of other women in similar circumstances.

Expected to spend a brief stint before being returned to their lives on the outside; these women are continuously held for petty slights and grievances, from at times seemingly inconsequential acts. With every slip up, the women's timers are reset, thus dragging their sentences out even longer. While the location within which they're housed isn't a literal prison, the Madison certainly operates in the same manner.

Masterfully blending the shifting expectations of the patriarchy and stigma of incarceration—upon those attempting to return to the general populous—with the horrors of our rapidly shifting technological landscape, this novel takes readers on quite the ride. An utterly infuriating novel that doesn't shy away from how interconnected various sectors are with the prison industrial complex. Madison wouldn't function without the support and primarily financial resources it received from the outside world.

It dares to ask what if tech companies never stopped taking, and the little protections and privacy we have in this modern digital world ceased to have meaning. Any errant thought could run the risk of a secretive organization carting you away for sedition or some other perceived premeditated criminality. A jail that isn't truly a jail—and thus void of what little protections a governmental institution would provide—detainees of Madison experience the horrors of a private prison with no oversight at all.

A frightening glimpse into what the future of forced institutionalization could look like. The days of sending a troublesome wife or unruly daughter away to an asylum for hysteria or some other heavily gendered affliction are supposed to be long gone. But what if they're not? Online spaces keep constant track of what individuals get up to, and the standards of judgment are hardly equitable. What a man could laugh off with an attempted apology could potentialy ruin a woman's life and/or career forever. Forgetting a grievance or slight is a choice, and one women are rarely offered.

This novel also has a myriad of things to say about race and the inequality of justice towards people of color, especially the fear of violence associated with Muslim and MENA people. As a white person, I'm not in a place to speak on the validity of these descriptions to present lived experiences, let alone how it could change over time.

A buzzy book (and @readwithjenna pick!) out now that really had my wheels spinning. Set in the near future and cashing in on Americans not reading the fine print - we expect, often pay for governments to keep us safe, right?

This seems like a fairly simple answer but to what lengths? THE DREAM HOTEL explores that and so much more - including themes of being a woman, motherhood, what dreams mean, surveillance, government overreach and government ineptitudes.

When Sara lands at LAX after a work conference, she is “retained” because data from her dreams has led the government to believe she will harm her husband. I thought this was a compelling and clever storyline. It displayed the many nuances within the story that I really appreciated and I was gripped with Sara’s fate. It gave Orange is the New Black vibes (though toned down a lot) and had me itching to see how it ended. But the ending is where I was incredibly underwhelmed. After all that I was like hug, okay.. Kind of boring? Especially given the content for the entire story.

Overall I did like it a lot, it was gritty and a little worrisome because none of it felt far off. (Which is why I love to dabble in speculative fiction). I do wish the ending gave me a little more to think about instead of wrapping up so neatly but overall I recommend!

This was such a great dystopian novel about what would happen if people’s dreams became monitored and used against them as evidence in future crimes. Handmaid’s Tale meets Orange is the New Black! Couldn’t put it down!

This book is a super interesting premise - it touches on important topics of civil rights, due process, AI and how we have become inseparable from technology. If you saw the movie "Minority Report" from the early 2000s, you may like this. I felt like a LOT of time was spent describing the detention facility, but I wanted to know much more about a secondary character, Julie, as well as an ending for other minor characters in the story. The ending felt incomplete - maybe a sequel is in the works? I would definitely read a sequel!

Well, this was a slightly horrifying read.

Everything that happened in the novel could happen or is heading in that direction as we speak.

I thought this was written well and the tension and the pacing was great. I liked the ideas that were explored such as the data collection of dreams and surveillance technology, especially with the surveillance of women. That was disturbing.

Overall, I would definitely recommend and will read more from this author!

Brilliant and disturbing! Literary dystopian is really having a moment right now, and if you’re at all interested in that as a category, this novel is a must-read. In addition to her lyrical writing, the novel is so inventive and mines an area that hasn’t been written about much in typical dystopian tropes/worlds: your dreams. The book is set at a women's “retention” center (basically a jail where the prisoners have a few more perks) because an algorithm that tracks data from their dreams has shown them to be a threat to society. In this case, the “retainee,” Sara Hussein, is accused of having dreamed about killing her husband—and the government believes there’s a chance she’ll actually kill him. Her quest to escape her wrongful retainment—while retaining the humanity the facility strips from her—is the heart of the book. It's such a relevant read night now, and the chilling depictions of "helpful" customer service AI hit way too close to home.

Thanks so much to Pantheon Books and NetGalley for providing me with a review copy!

Release date: Out now! 🗓️

Summary
When Sara Hussein arrives at LAX from London, she never expects to be stopped by the Risk Assessment Administration (RAA). She definitely doesn’t expect to be labeled a danger to her husband—based solely on her dreams. But that’s exactly what happens. Detained at Madison, a retention center for women flagged as high-risk, she finds herself trapped in a system that thrives on arbitrary rules and endless extensions, all dictated by the whims of the staff. As time drags on, Sara realizes that compliance isn’t getting her any closer to freedom—it’s only reinforcing the institution’s power. When she stops playing along, she starts to unravel the truth about Madison and the fear-driven system that keeps it running.
What I Liked
Sara’s character development – At the start, she’s hopeful and compliant, convinced that following the rules will help her get out. But as the story progresses, she realizes compliance only benefits those in power. By the end, she takes control in a way that feels earned.

The message about collective action – Hurting corporations where it counts (their pockets) is a real-world strategy we need to adopt. Power only shifts when the masses stop blindly following orders.

It was the right length – Some literary books drag on unnecessarily, but this one didn’t overstay its welcome.

Tech paranoia done right – Makes you think twice about integrating technology into your daily life and actually reading the fine print before signing anything.

What I Didn’t Like
The pacing was slow – Despite being under 300 pages, some chapters felt unnecessarily long.

Eisley’s POV felt pointless – She only seemed relevant when Sara was recruiting the other women, and then she just disappeared from the narrative.

Lack of clarity on SafeX – Was it actively preventing Sara from communicating with the outside world, or was that just implied? This could’ve been clearer.
Overall
I enjoyed this despite it not being my usual go-to for pacing and genre. If you like tense, character-driven sci-fi that explores capitalism, power, and non-compliance, this is worth reading.

The Dream Hotel, set in the future, follows the story of Sara, who just came back from a work trip and gets stopped by the Risk Assessment Administration. She is told that she needs to be kept under observation for twenty-one days because she is a risk to her husband. The RAA used data from her dreams to determine that she is a risk. She is then sent to a retention center with other dreamers. She is in the retention center longer than expected.

The Dream Hotel is the first book I have read by Laila Lalami. I loved it! I am usually not a science fiction fan, but this book hooked me from the beginning. It took some time to adjust to the plot, but I was engaged once I read more about the RAA and how they analyzed the dreams. The book did end abruptly, but there is so much to learn from this book.

Laila Lalami’s newest novel takes place in a highly plausible near-future world in which you can get a simple neuroprosthetic installed to help you sleep instantly and soundly. It saves the lives of sleep-deprived mothers, doctors, truckers, and so many others. But hidden in its terms and conditions is the company’s ability to sell your dreams to third-parties, including regulatory bodies.

And in this world, a novel law intended to proactively prevent crimes before they happen assigns every individual a risk score based on dozens of characteristics - including your dreams. If your score is deemed too high, you can be held in “retention” - essentially incarcerated - for your risk of committing a crime in the future, until your score goes down. Our main character, Sara Hussein, is flagged for having a score above the threshold at LAX, and when she dares to talk back to an officer, they throw her in retention: not a dream hotel, as the title implies, but a dream prison. She’s meant to be there for 21 days, but at the start of the book, she’s been there for 327.

This book is incredibly hard to read because it combines many of our worst fears into one scarily believable world: the privatization of the criminal justice system, government overreach and runaway violations of civil liberties in the name of “public safety,” and climate disasters most impacting marginalized communities like the incarcerated. I felt extreme anxiety reading this book, precisely because Lalami’s novel is not at all dissimilar to what’s going on in our current world with people who committed the most minor crimes facing the Sisyphean obstacles of bureaucracy and dehumanization to experiencing freedom ever again.

The plot is excellent, the characters are compelling, and the narrative time-shifts keep you engaged the whole time. But you’ll (begrudgingly) love this book because of the difficult questions it makes you ask and the uncomfortable realities it makes you face.

This book was ok. I loved the idea, but it fell short for me. The pacing was slow. The ending wrapped up nicely and I feel like a lot of people would like this one.

Thank you Pantheon and NetGalley for this arc
#TheDreamHotel#NetGalley

Quite an interesting focus on the potential effects of AI, especially in light of recent events. The author seems to have crafted this masterfully!

I feel ambivalent about this book.as much as I enjoyed the plot and the storytelling, I felt completely down by its ending. Sara is married, she young twin, and upon landing at LAX on her way back from a London conference, she gets held for further questioning because her score is too high. Sara doesn't understand how she can possibly have a high score. This book is like an alarm informing us that we are on our way to this type of society. A society that sneaks into our brains and unconscious selves and they get to record everything we do and the behavior we hold.
It's just too bad it ended this way.. way too many loose threads.

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

“MY BODY, MY DREAMS” “WE THE PEOPLE, NOT WE THE PRODUCTS.”

Have you ever had those dreams in which you’re falling down an endless abyss and then you jolt awake at the last second before you hit the ground? Or a dream where you do something so out of character and you wake up horrified? Imagine being criminalized for such dreams.

Sara Hussein is taken to one of the “dream hotels” or Madison retention center for three weeks to be watched to ensure she will not hurt her husband. But every action is scored against you. One mistake can leave you with four extra weeks. By the time our novel begins, Sara has been there for nearly ten months. She’s away from her twins who are only two, raised alone by her husband as she cannot get out of Madison. Sara is desperate for any sort of freedom she can get, as she befriends other women and tries to find a way to help them all. This book is a treatise on technology and its invasion of our lives, criticism of large corporations controlling our every day actions, and a criticism of prison systems. The scary part of this novel is how easy most people would agree to such an idea. A minority of few are oppressed, kept for months in terrible centers treated like felons for crimes that have not been committed yet so the majority can be safe from threats. This novel becomes more pressuring in our current political climate and I applaud the author for her ability to weave reality and her sci-fi world into something so realistic that it could be in our futures.

“She wants to be free, and what is freedom if not the wrestling of the self from the gaze of others, including her own?”

“To be a woman was to watch yourself not just through your own eyes, but through the eyes of others.”

“Freedom isn’t a blank slate, she wants to tell them. Freedom is teeming and complicated and yes, risky, and it can only be written in the company of others.”

Thanks to Net Galley, who gave me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I've heard this book described by its similarities to Phillip K. Dick's Minority Report, but other than the idea of punishing crimes yet to be committed this book has little in common with that short story and subsequent Tom Cruise vehicle. Both imagine a darker future plagued by aggressive state surveillance and punishment, but Lalami's vision draws meaningful connections between that surveillance and a neocolonial agenda backed by sexist and racist data gathering that rings all to true in this current moment.

The story centers on Sarah Hussein, a Muslim American archivist and recent mother of twins unexpectedly and indefinitely detained afer returning to the US from abroad. A new technology assesses her dreams and past as a risk for violence through a government enforced and privately operated system for preventing future crimes.

Interestingly, where Dick's protagonist searches alone for exonerating evidence, Lalami's hero struggles and works from within the system, building power through sharing information and developing relationships with her fellow detainees.

There is so much richness here-- both in Lalami's prose and the twisting of the knife aimed to break our protagonist's will and leech her freedom, funds, and sanity. You'll also find threads leading back to Kafka and abolitionist texts that detail the randomness and inhumanity of incarceration, as well as connections to dream theory and work on trauma.

This book was incredibly well done, but it did take an emotional toll. At times I had to put it aside when parallels to the injustices of our current administration were too strong. Although it grapples with intense topics-- surveillance, technology, bias, and control-- it ultimately does provide some ideas for holding on to our humanity.

Review also posted to goodreads.

I was really excited by the concept, but a little disappointed with the execution. Loved the writing style and the themes, but the story got repetitive after a while, mostly during the middle portion of the book, where it felt like nothing was really happening. I found it a bit of a slog to get through, but I did mostly enjoy the first and last 20% of the book.

3.75 stars This speculative fiction novel takes place in a world where the government calculates risk factors based on a variety of risk factors, including the content of a person's dreams. The protagonist is detained on at the airport on a flight back from London and most of the story is what happens to her while she is in detention.

Overall I thought this book was interesting and poignant. Lalami makes good comments on our prison industrial complex through the way that the retention center (they can't be "detained" only "retained" since they haven't committed a crime.) I did find that there were a few points that got somewhat confusing. In the beginning of part 3 I found myself reading about a new character that I didn't recognize to the extent that I checked several times to see if my e-reader had erroneously opened another book. And as is often the case with this genre, the ending is not satisfying or climactic.

Overall I recommend this book. I've read a lot of speculative fiction recently, which has probably raised my bar for the genre. This isn't the first book I'd read if I were looking to dip my toes in the S.F. pool, but if you are interested in the genre and comparing approaches I think you'll absolutely enjoy it.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advance reading copy for unbiased review.

3.5 ⭐️ rounded up!

The concept here was super interesting -- use personal data (including dream data) to assess the risk of an individual's potential to commit a crime... and then detain them for a crime that they haven't committed (yet). This gave very near future dystopian vibes and was thought provoking from start to finish, but the ending fell a bit flat for me! During the last 20% of the book, I felt like I was being led towards something huge happening, and then it was just nothing. Had the potential to be so much more!! Definitely seems like a story that's not quite over yet, either.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for a DRC in exchange for my honest review ◡̈