Dream Student

De: J. J. DiBenedetto

Narrado por: Heather Jane Hogan

College junior Sara Barnes thought her life was totally under control. All she had to worry about was her final exams, Christmas shopping, applying to medical school - and what to do about the cute freshman in the next dorm with a crush on her. Everything was going according to plan, until the night she started seeing other people’s dreams.

It’s bad enough that Sara is learning more than she ever needed to know about her friends and classmates, watching their most secret fantasies whether she wants to or not. Much worse are the other dreams, the ones she sees nearly every night, featuring a strange, terrifying man who commits unspeakable crimes. Now Sara wonders if she’s the only witness to a serial killer - and the only one who knows when and where he’s going to strike next.

Dream Student is the prequel to the Dream Doctor Mysteries.

Also by J.J. DiBenedetto:

The Dream Doctor Mysteries (all ten books!)

Betty and Howard’s Excellent Adventure (narrated by Doctor Who star Nicola Bryant!)

The Jane Barnaby Adventures (three books so far!)

Finding Dori (part of the Welcome to Romance collection!)

Mr. Smith and the Roach (coming soon!)

©2013 James DiBenedetto (P)2013 James DiBenedetto

Loved it

The story was amazing! The characters were so hilarious and witty! The narrator did a fantastic job.

enjoyable in the end

the first 3 or 4 hours of this book were very hard to get into, but once I got passed it I was able to enjoy the story. however this ended up not being what I thought it would be and I think that's why I was bored. I would be interested to see where this story goes.

I received this audio book free for an honest review

Dream-sharing

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this to friends who share my fascination with dreams!

What was one of the most memorable moments of Dream Student?

Without giving away spoilers, I will say that it's memorable when Sara goes lucid in her dreams to help discover key evidence.

What aspect of Heather Jane Hogan’s performance would you have changed?

I would have preferred a somewhat faster pace. 1.5 seemed just about right for me.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

The next dream you have might not be your own!

Any additional comments?

It's the fall semester, 1989, and Sara Barnes is a junior enrolled in her university's pre-med program. One night she has someone else's dream, one that demonstrates its dreamer, a freshman named Brian, is clearly very attracted to her. Soon they meet and discover that their connection goes beyond dream-sharing. But this turns out to be just the beginning. At first, Sara having other people's dreams is merely a case of having way too much information about classmates' subconcious minds. But before too long, she is witnessing more sinister dreams, from the mind of someone who is killing young women. How can she figure out who he is and find a way to stop him?

The idea of having other people's dreams is one that has fascinated me for a long time. One April a couple of years ago, I even wrote a "Script Frenzy" script for a graphic novel, where a group of characters realize they are having one another's dreams. In my story, their dream swaps could be traced back to a study they all participated in, where they were unknowingly implanted with chips that caused their dreams to transmit to one another. And the whole thing kind of devolved into a hot mess involving reality, and I never returned to the script. BUT. I still find the dream-transmission idea fascinating. J. J. DiBenedetto does a much better job with it than I did in my sad little attempt!

One thing that was kind of fun for me is that Sara is just a year younger than I am, though she is two years behind where I was in undergrad. She does have an October birthday, so I guess her parents would have had a choice to let her be one of the oldest or one of the youngest students, and they must have gone with older. The book is mostly told in first-person present tense, and I felt that Sara had a likeable narrative voice. Her dreams are narrated in third person.

I listened to the audiobook version of this novel, and I found the narrator's deliver a little bit slow and almost sleepy, as if she were just waking up from one of Sara's dreams. What I did was adjust the reading speed to 1.5X, and once I did that, I thought the narrating sounded fine.

[I received a free copy of this audiobook from the author, in exchange for an honest review.]

An Interesting Premise

Sara Barnes is a premed student prepping for finals before the Christmas holiday. She's never been able to remember her dreams until she has a particularly vivid dream involving a freshman in a nearby dorm. This one is different, Sara knows that it isn't her dream and she's an involuntary voyeur to the freshman's fantasy. Then the nightmares begin, and Sara learns that she's sharing her dreams with a monster.

I really liked the premise of this book, slipping into a person's dream to learn their deepest desires and secrets. It's a really cool idea. I had a hard time classifying the story, it's not quite a thriller, or a mystery, or a romance. I'd describe it as the everyday life of a premed student who happens to have precognitive dreams. The book was written at a slow and steady pace filled with day to day details. The sex scenes were fade to black, there were no real descriptions of violence, and only one or two curse words.

I thought Sara was a strong lead, despite the debilitating nightmares it's obvious she's usually a steady person. I'd like to see Brian developed further, all I really knew about his personality was that he's timid, clingy, and he's desperately in love with Sara. I'd like to see him grow a bit. I usually like my book relationships to develop naturally through interaction and conversation, I'm not an insta-love fan. Since this wasn't a romance, it wasn't too much of an issue.

I thought the narrator's voice and style worked well for the story. The narration was a little slow, I bumped it up to 1.5x. I did have to pay close attention to differentiate between Sara's random stream of consciousness thought and what she actually said out loud, because there's no way to discern which is which in the audio. It didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story. I requested a copy of the audiobook, and I'm voluntarily leaving a review.

Dream Student

At first I wondered how I would like because it seemed slow paced. Then I realized that it was purposeful. I ended up really liking it. Great characters.