Should you be held accountable for what you dream? Are dreams a foretelling of what you will actually do? These themes are explored in The Dream Hotel.

This book was well written and thought provoking. The author did a good job of building the story around Sarah and the other women. It was easy to become invested in their stories and lives in the retention center. I was a little confused at first with the author's writing style until I figured out the rhythm of her writing and the story.

The story builds slowly and is a heavy read at times. This made me feel the same as when I read The Handmaid's Tale. To me these two books are similar in the way they tell stories of a futuristic, but maybe not too far away, world.

This is a book that I will be thinking about for awhile. It is also one I will be recommending.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.

Set in the not too distant future, this extrapolates our lackadaisical attitudes towards privacy about our data to a frightening, but wholly credible, point.

Sara Hussein is a retainee at Madison retention center not a prison, though alarmingly like one. Like all of the retainees, she was brought there because her “risk assessment score” went over an arbitrary line. She has not committed a crime, but the algorithm suggests that she might and therefore needs to be retained for a period of 21 days to get her score down. But like virtually everyone else at Madison, Sara keeps breaking rules she’s not aware of and her sentence keeps being extended.

The algorithm is fed data from numerous sources including a neuroprosthetic, which Sara, like millions of others, had inserted to help her sleep. But the Dreamsaver also records her dreams and feeds those into the algorithm. Conversely, Sara also records her dreams and thoughts into a journal, which gives the reader the opportunity to understand her

The novel is leisurely paced as the world building gradually unpeels. Early on a new retainee arrives, which gives the author the opportunity to explain a lot of background. Eisley, however, is something of a Trojan horse as she’s bringing more than just innocent enquiries into the facility and, though a catalyst for action, the later diversion to what she’s really up to feels a little bit of a loose end,

The novel wends its way towards closure when wild fires break out and threaten Madison, and the retainees are evacuated. This ultimately precipitates Sara into an act of rebellion that teeters on the knife edge between freedom and even longer incarceration.

The novel is most damning about the profligate way we give our data in exchange for convenience or ease and the way we sign agreements without reading them (and the way these companies can bury shameless usage information into page eleven of these agreements). It also pinpoints the inequities of this justice system, virtually indistinguisable from our current one, as the retainees are uniformly minorities or impoverished.

You might not feel like reading this right now, which I understand, but I highly recommend it as a dystopia just a whisper away from where we are now.

Thanks to Knopf Pantheon and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

4.5 Stars- WOW!!

This was a gripping, thought provoking novel that completely took me by surprise. I went in knowing very little beyond the basic premise, and I highly recommend doing the same as this is a book best experienced with fresh eyes.

Lalami’s writing is stunning, weaving together a cast of complex, deeply human characters whose inner lives are as rich as they are haunting. The novel explores the terrifying possibility of being deemed guilty despite having done nothing wrong. What if your government could monitor not just your actions, but your thoughts, words, and even dreams? How do personal thoughts measure against real world behavior, and who gets to decide if they align?

The themes in this book of surveillance, personal autonomy, and the blurred line between intent and action, are both chilling and eerily plausible. The tension builds masterfully, and by the time I reached the ending, my heart was racing. It left me unsettled in the best way.

I think this had a lot of potential - cool ideas, good writing, interesting character ideas and set up.
There was so much potential, and it did realize some of it, but not all.

First, it was a bit weak on the world-building/technological side of things, as well as in the character building.
Why is Sara only now realizing how everything works re: detention centers, the algorithm, etc. when there is already a whole branch of government dedicated to it, in their society?
I think we also needed some sort of reckoning for Sara, see her have to realize that moral choices would really cost her and would take her away from all her privilege. This never really happens. It reads a lot like a privileged woman discovering injustice and the concepts of resistance. Another option would have been to explore her anger problems - we glimpse her bottled rage and she is so extremely quick to fury. I would have like the story better if we had gotten someone who could have killed her husband, a very imperfect victim who still fights for what's just.
We get an imperfect victim, alright... but a dramatic and out of touch one. That did not make for a pleasant read.
Finally, the end was about community and how freedom is not protected/won alone but then the other women were not very detailed as characters, and that's a bit of a shame.

Then, the structure was a bit jarring: the back and forth between timelines, in the first part of the book or the change of POV in the middle - they did not feel useful to the narration, and actually ended up being distracting, in my opinion. The ending feels very rushed too, with a lot of things thrown in last minute, but not given enough time/page space to be developed.

In conclusion, I think this had a lot of potential, but did not fully realize it.

I had heard people talking about this book and I was interested in reading it. I’m glad I did. The plot revolves around Sara who is put at a center for a crime she has yet to commit. What crime is she there for and what happens is the rest of the story. What really made me unnerved was how real this situation could be in the future. It made me question my social media usage and my digital footprint. It gave me a lot to think about and it’s hard to get out of my mind. Very relevant to our lives.

Laila Lalami takes us to a dystopian future where dreams are mined from an implant that predicts future crime. An AI algorithm then assigns individuals with a risk score, if the score is too high, the person is then removed from society to a holding facility until deemed safe to reenter society.

This book feels especially relevant today as ownership of data seems ambiguous, individuals are unjustly interred, and algorithms rule our lives.

I enjoyed the ending that highlighted the importance of not becoming complacent even in the face of unfairness and that it reminded the reader that we need to stand together for our freedoms.

The pacing felt like it could have been a little tighter but this book is important. I felt outraged and oppressed. The ‘attendants’ (aka jailers) were truly horrible and demonstrated the uphill battle and dehumanization of life while incarcerated.

This book is a warning to our society as rights are stripped from citizens, private data is lost and sold, and those at the top are power hungry and unjust.

“Entire generations have never known life without surveillance. Watched from the womb to the grave, they take corporate ownership of their personal data to be a fact of life, as natural as leaves growing on trees.”

“Freedom is teeming and
complicated and, yes, risky, and it can only be written in the company of others.”

Publication date: March 4, 2025
Pages: 336

Thank you so much to @netgalley and @pantheonbooks for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Oh boy, was this a tough read, especially given the unfortunately heightened relevance of all the issues explored in this book. Lalami is a phenomenal writer, but is also clearly very perceptive about the critical political questions being raised today as technology outpaces our own moral developments. Deeply thought-provoking, to say the least.

The dream hotel is a sobering a look at how much of ourselves we willingly give away for convenience, and a reminder that in this capitalist society, true freedom means embracing discomfort.

The Dream Hotel follows Sara who is detained for 21 days because, based on a dream and an algorithm, she has been deemed a risk to husband. She is put in a facility with other women who have had "dangerous dreams", and before she knows it those 21 days stretch indefinitely, as every infraction (intentional or not) adds weeks to her "retention", until she feels like she will never be free. In the meantime, she must work for the center in order to keep her risk score low in the hopes of one day, maybe, getting out.

This novel explores the ways we buy into the myth of neutrality when it comes to technology. However, tech is built by human beings, and our biases go into the building of it, and the enforcement of its results is also done by human beings. So, now we are in a world in which a frustrated and exhausted woman's dreams are categorized and dangerous, the punishment of this danger is upheld and enforced by men, and she is put in an institution whose rules are so rigid, by design, that it is impossible to escape.

On Retention and other institutions like it: I love that the prison is called a retention center instead of what it is, a prison. There are so many institutions that function like this in the United States, and I'msure around the world. Also, the depiction of beauracracy in this novel is PAINFULLY accurate. So much of the automated correspondence filled me with deep deep rage.

On our bodies as capital/capitalism is driven on slave labor. The obvious commentary about prisons as for-profit institutions is amazing. If locking people up makes  money, what stops the powers that be from inventing new crimes, and for locking people up as crime prevention? When your body and your mind become a form of capital, what incentives do they have to free you? How do you protect your assets and yourself when the idea of protection is used as a form of control?

I really enjoyed the ways certain characters used written correspondence as a way to assert their point of view and get their words onto official records.

Perspective shift: There is a sudden perspective shift halfway through the book that didn't feel entirely necessarily warranted. The information communicated in that portion of the story could've communicated in other ways, especially since we don't really return to that POV. I do like that this opens the possibility of exploring this world through another lens.

Also, the latter half of the book felt incredibly rushed. A lot happens in the second half, and it felt a little jumbled together. I wish the finesse shown in the first half of the book was demonstrated in the second half.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. A huge thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the Advance Reader Copy!

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is one of those stories that will stick with me for a very long time. Set in the near future where each citizen is assigned a risk score (how likely they are to commit a crime) based on many different factors that including dreams. Those with high scores are sent to retention centers where they have the “opportunity” to lower their scores and return to society in as little as three weeks. Our main character, Sara, is detained largely due to a dream where she was perceived to have harmed her husband. In an infuriating series of events, her retention gets extended again and again. Lots of thought provoking commentary on the privatization of prison systems, the dangers of AI and how our information can be used against us. It was a compelling and enraging read. Highly recommend!

Thank you @netgalley and @pantheonbooks for an eARC.

What a ride. This storyline felt eerily real while reading. Lalami does a great job of highlighting how easily surveillance becomes the norm & the dangers of pretending that data can speak for itself. Many more themes stick out, but I’m trying to write this with no spoilers lol.

For me, it was a slow start. I appreciate the world building and context, but I wish some of the space was used to explore other aspects of the plot further. I have so many questions. Despite that, I appreciate the writing and pacing - I looked forward to reading The Dream Hotel.

Thank you to Pantheon Books for the ARC. All views are my own.

The Dream Hotel is a psychological speculative fiction novel with authoritarian control at its core. The novel is perhaps even scarier because it’s not difficult to imagine the plot unfolding in modern society.

The protagonist, Sara, is a new, working mother to twins. Wanting to sleep less and function better, she receives an implant device designed to do just that. The bad news? The AI software in her determines she is at risk of murdering her husband — based solely on her dreams — and she is detained. 21 days turns into nearly a year as she navigates incarceration, tries to show she isn’t a threat, and is subjected to the whims of algorithms.

Themes of lack of control, loss of autonomy, failure of due process, deprivation of rights at the hands of government and big tech abound. Lalami’s writing was sublime, and this book will stay with me for a long while. I highly recommend.

This reminded me so much of The School for Good Mothers. It was very thought provoking, but felt pretty slow at times. This one would make for great book club discussion, but I was bored for parts of it. If you enjoy futuristic/slightly sci-fi novels about a world very similar to the one we live in now, you might enjoy this.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami was a fantastic read that I recommend everyone to add to their TBR. This was my first read by this author; now I can't wait to get my hands on all the books this author has written.

Imagine a world in the not-too-distant future where everyone is under surveillance and not even your dreams are private. This was my first book by author Laila Lalami and was absolutely blown away by this dystopian tale. Not only is this novel scary timely, but it is also well-written and utterly absorbing. I devoured this in two days and will continue thinking about it for many more.

"In any case crime is relative, its boundaries shifting in service of the people in power.
The dream house is a novel about Sara, an archivist, mother, wife and a daughter to two Moroccan parents, whom have raised her to abide by the law, not to draw attention to herself and she would not have any problems with the justice system. However, it proved to be fruitless as one day she was detained for being a "questionable" profile at the airport because the sources the AI used said so.
Laila Lalami managed to blend the haunting past and the fear of the unknown future, where human being are reducted as mere data to collect, a statistic that they aquire through invasive means from their childhood to social media accounts and the most scary one, their dreams. All to determine who's likely to be a criminal, without having committed an actual crime.
I believe this novel discusses a lot of important topics that are relevant to our contemporary society where poc are always seen as suspicious and questionable and the ethics of AI, it also highlights how important it is to challenge to system and build a communit especially when it sounds so terrifying.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC in exchange of an honest review!!

these days it's like, oh, a near future in which people are thrown in prison based on being determined close to committing a crime by a deeply flawed and capitalist algorithm created by a creep with political ambitions? who could imagine. 
in spite of feeling about a week and a half away from our current reality, this is an intense, oppressive book. i felt so surveilled and so restricted, just by virtue of the depth of both on-page. it's timely and terrifying.

This one is a science fiction for the literary fiction lover. It was slower than I thought it would be and a quiet novel in a good way. I enjoyed how it was character driven with the science fiction in the background. Would have liked the secondary characters to have been a bit more distinct and fleshed out, but overall enjoyed my time! 3.75 rating rounded up to 4.

To say I enjoyed this book isn’t quite true, but I dare to say this book isn’t meant to be “enjoyed.” I expected something much more fictional - dream surveillance? - but what I got was something that felt much more realistic and of the present time than I expected. This book is important - especially now. I’m left reflective about technology, surveillance, trust, resistance, and human potential - for good and for evil.

The social commentary goes hard in this one.

Following Sara’s journey was at times infuriating, heartbreaking, and relatable. I thought the social commentary was well and elegantly done. I do wish there had been some further resolution to the story, even though I’m sure that was to make a point about the nature of Sara’s confinement.

I appreciated the commentary on emergent problems with surveillance technology, the true nature of retention centers, the use of captive subjects as nonconsensual experiment participants, and the illusion that science/innovation is value-free and always leads to social good. And, of course, the slow, creeping demonstration of the insidious nature of for-profit imprisonment. And! Even more presciently! The socially constructed nature of crime and how this can be molded and enforced to suit the whims of those in power.

Overall, this was an excellent incorporation and demonstration of these systemic failures/violence into a singular narrative.

4.5/5*

Intense and kind of terrifying; The Dream Hotel is a world I hope to never live in. From the get go the situations in this book were frustrating and unthinkable. The way technology was infiltrating peoples lives with zero regard for privacy was truly frightening. Things in the book keep getting worse and worse. I was always hoping our hope for a better future but it was hard to even imagine whether there could be anything “better” on the other side. This book is thought provoking and could definitely spark some interesting conversations. I hoped for more resolution at the end, it was quite an abrupt finish. However I understand that there is very little positive resolution to be had in that world. A world I hope to never be part of.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are mine alone.