McMann, Lisa: Wake
Wake (2008)
Written by: Lisa McMann
Genre: YA/Paranormal Romance
Pages: 210 (Trade Paperback)
I'd seen this book around and knew its basic premise: the heroine gets sucked into other peoples' dreams. I hadn't really heard anything about the book to make me pick up though, until my friend and grad school colleague, Tricia from Damsels in Regress, discussed the book on Facebook. She loved it, so when I saw it at the store, I picked it up. Noticed how short the book was (there's a lot of white space within the pages too) and decided to read it that day. Read it, finished it, all in the same day I bought it. Obviously, it's a fast read.
The premise: Janie keeps getting sucked into other people's dreams. And by getting sucked in, I do mean sucked in. If someone falls asleep in study hall, Janie can't help it. She's there, in the dream, while to the outsider, it looks like she's having an epileptic fit. She's tired of her ability, tired of her helplessness, and tired of knowing the inmost desires of all of her classmates. Until one day she falls into a nightmare of terrifying violence, and that scares her more than anything she's ever experienced before, especially since the dreamer is the guy she might be falling in love with.
Review style: it's a short book and it'll be a short review. Stream-of-conscious, with spoilers, simply because the book's too short NOT to spoil, and there's a few points I want to discuss.
First off, it's obviously a very, very fast read. You kind of get sucked into this book like Janie gets sucked into other people's dreams. Part of it's just the design of the book itself. It's easy to know when Janie's in dreams, as it's written in another font, and there's a lot of white space at the end of chapters. Speaking of the end of chapters, they tend to end on a tense note, which makes you want to keep reading forward.
Janie's certainly a sympathetic character. While she suffers from "my-mom-sucks-ass-and-doesn't-care-what-I-do" syndrome, she's a character to admire, though I'm sure some people might want to dissect whether or not Janie acts like a realistic teen, dreams aside. After all, she's poor and she works her butt off in order to make money and go to school, not to mention to provide food and whatnot for the home, as her mother tends to spend it on liquor and the like. I dunno. I've heard some people complain about this particular trope, but let's face it: there are tons of parents out there who just aren't parents and as a result, their children can sometimes grow up really fast. In Janie's case, it makes even more sense: how can you be sucked into so many other people's dreams and not come out of them a little older, if not a little wiser? And McMann introduces an interesting interaction between Janie and her mom: when her mother pleasantly surprises her, like at the end when she helped provide bail money. I hope that, in the trilogy, we see the relationship between Janie and her mother grow and maybe evolve. I'm not looking for perfect parenting, but having been on the short end of that stick myself (and knowing people who've also been on the short end of that stick), it's interesting when you finally learn the other side of your absent parent's life. Their motivations, etc.
Of course, Cabel also suffers from absent/evil parent syndrome, but oh well. It works for his character, considering.
The plot itself is pretty simple. Janie tries to control her abilities and not appear like the freak she thinks she is. Caleb learns of her ability/curse while on a school trip, and he helps her out. Sure, learning she's seen HIS dreams freaks him out, but he believes her because in one dream she was observing, he was observing HER observing his dream self. How that worked, I'm not sure, but it was good to see Janie with an ally. Sure, she has a friend in Carrie, but Carrie becomes a bit more of a flake as the book progresses, even to the point where Janie is annoyed with her, even though she's bailing her out. I hope that Carrie isn't written off in the trilogy, and that we keep other people in Janie's life. We've got Cabe, who's the love interest and kind of doesn't count. There's Miss Stubin, who had Janie's talent as well and is training her to use it, but Miss Stubin is kind of dead and can only appear in the dream world. We've already talked about Janie and her mother, so aside from Cabe, Miss Stubin, and the police captain, no one knows her very well, let alone her secret.
Still, despite the books flaws and its very simple plot, it's rather enjoyable. You have the standard misunderstanding the keeps the couple apart, and then said misunderstanding gets resolved (I'm still puzzling over the realism of Cabe being a pseudo-undercover cop and Janie ending up with a similar deal, but hey! It's fiction! And since I enjoyed the story, I won't poke at it too much) so the couple can be together. I did find the climax itself to be a little anti-climatic, as I didn't quite realize it was THE BIG SCENE until I noted how many pages I had left in the book, but that said, the story wrapped up quite nicely, even though the book didn't have an obvious plot line. And by that I mean this: you expected the love story to resolve, and you expected Janie to somehow gain some kind of control of her abilities, but those were more a series of events than a story connected by plot, by that definition, the book didn't have an obvious plot line.
I could've done without the first "chapter" or "prologue" or whatever it was, as it was basically a scene to sort of establish her ability and then the book flashes back so many years earlier, and frankly, it made me pay more attention to the dates and times in the headers than necessary.
My Rating
Worth the Cash: I wouldn't go out and buy these books in hardcover, mind you, so obviously I'm waiting to get my hands on the sequel, Fade, until it comes out in trade, but I will pick it up. Wake was very enjoyable and I'm happy to read forward. The premise itself IS interesting and different, and I'm looking forward to seeing how McMann develops Janie and her abilities in the later books. It's an incredibly fast read, and while there are moments that'll induce eyebrow-raising, honestly, the story itself is so enjoyable you kind of end up not caring. At least, I didn't. I'm glad I grabbed it.
Cover Commentary: It's pretty simple, but I like the simplicity. It grabbed my attention easily with the title and solitary object, though the pillow is a little misleading, since Janie will get sucked into people's dreams whether she's awake or not.
Next up: Ash by Malinda Lo (YA)