Mike Nappa

When I first got this in the mail, I looked at the spine and freaked out a bit when I saw the large number 3 printed at the top. I have not read the first two books and was worried about understanding what was happening. There was no reason for me to worry at all. This book is a great standalone.
So, I liked this one a lot. It was difficult to put down and the mystery wrapped up well without loose ends. The book was not too complicated and it was easy enough to follow -- except for the perspective of Dream. Dream is suffering from PTSD and his chapters show his confusion and memory situations quite well. It never made perfect sense, but I don't believe that it was meant to.
Trudi was a good character to get to know. She had a never-give-up attitude that served her well.
The ending was different. I am wondering why it happened the way it did, as there was no reasons explained.
If you are looking for a suspense that will keep you on your toes, A Dream Within a Dream will certainly keep you happy.

Rating: 5/5
Language: n/a
Romance: n/a
Spiritual: n/a
Violence: gunshot wounds, death

*I received a copy of this novel from the publisher. All thoughts are my own and a positive review was not required.… (meer)

The premise of the book sounded interesting, but the execution was clunky. While the main characters are set up clearly enough, there’s a whole mess of generic men as side characters (primarily villains). It’s not always clear, especially at first, which man is in the scene or what exactly they’re doing. Some of this is certainly to build suspense, and some of this is because one of the main characters has a few issues like memory loss. However, there are also a lot of places where it wouldn’t serve the story to be vague. If the characters were described better that might take care of some of the problem. The book also uses a lot of weird scene jumps, cutting away in the middle of conversations and then jumping back into that conversation in a later flashback. Since it’s not done in a way that makes sense or builds tension, it’s just another element that makes this story kind of a mess. The characters didn’t really stand out, either. The two leads (former spouses) spend far too much time thinking about each other in vague, repetitive ways. The woman, who does taekwondo, leans very heavily into this and spends many scenes thinking about fighting people, which makes it come across as more of a gimmick than a feature that would round out her character.… (meer)