a hundred visions and revisions

Ever since she was eight years old, Janie has been an unwilling observer of other people's dreams. Anytime anyone near her falls asleep and starts to dream, she is forced to enter their dream as well. This has made high school difficult from time to time as her fellow students fall asleep in class, and sleepovers are next to impossible, but somehow Janie's been able to muddle along for nearly ten years. Until one day she finds herself in one of her classmate's nightmares, one so horrifying that Janie finally decides that something has to be done.

I picked this one up because the premise sounded so intriguing, but ultimately I thought it was pretty disappointing. The third-person present tense narration really got on my nerves after a while, and the story was told so choppily that I found it hard to really get involved. Not to mention the ridiculous twist towards the end (Spoiler: Her formerly-goth-loser-but-now-suddenly-hot classmate with crazy nightmares turns out to be an undercover cop pretending to be a dealer in order to bust a huge drug operation run by another classmate's father. Um, what?), and the fact that her dreams and why they happen is never really explained, beyond us being told that Janie reads a few dream books from the local library that supposedly solve everything - talk about unsatisfying. Apparently there's a sequel, and maybe it explains more about this implausible premise, but I don't think I'll be reading it.