Review Detail

Sloane Margaret “Maggie” Jameson is a glamorous up-and-coming actress in New York City. Sloane Margaret Jameson is also a straight-A student living in small town Connecticut. At night, the two girls, Maggie and Sloane, dream of each other’s lives. For each of them, their life is reality and the dreams are just that—dreams. But is that it? Two girls share their lives in dreams without anything else going on? Are they crazy? Are they both real? What, exactly, is going on?

Those are just a few questions you’ll find yourself asking while reading Lucid. Critically acclaimed screenwriter Ron Bass and his partner Adrienne Stoltz deliver a thought-provoking contemporary novel that explores the power of dreams and of the human mind. I guarantee you’ve never seen contemporary young adult fiction done quite like this.

Though their lives could not have been more different, I found that Maggie and Sloane’s narrative voices were identical. As chapters progressed, I often could not tell the difference between them. Their thoughts, reactions, and moods were the same. Whether they live in alternate realities, or are just some sort of hallucinations, it’s obvious that the two girls share a deep connection, beyond the obvious shared-dreams.

I will say that Lucid takes a while to build up to the crazy psychological thriller aspects. For most of the book, Bass and Stoltz write about two girls going about their lives, dealing with inevitable love triangles. (Both Maggie and Sloane are total boy magnets, obviously.) And though my brand of contemporary isn’t usually so romance-centric, I didn’t actually mind their stories separately. Toward the last 70 pages, however, Maggie and Sloane’s lives started to intersect, and that’s when craziness went down.

I’m going to be honest and say that the conclusion shocked me. I’m not often surprised while reading, but Lucid was not at all what I expected. In fact, I’d been all set up for the authors to take the story in one direction, and when they wrenched that ending right out from under me, I felt a tad bit miffed. My surprise was absolute.

Lucid is different. It’s a lot more different than even I was expecting, which probably says something. Though it may have got off to a rocky start, the intense thrills in the last few chapters mostly made up for it. I was surprised, as I said, but there may have been something lacking, on a whole. Either way, however, this is a seriously unique novel that’s totally worth reading.