Dream Keeper by Amber R Duell

Posted January 31, 2019 by karenbaron in Review, Romance, Series, Young Adult / 0 Comments

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from . This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Dream Keeper

by Amber R. Duell

Series: Dark Dreamer Trilogy #1
Series Rating:

Published by The Parliament House on January 29, 2019
Genres: YA Dark Fantasy
Pages: 288
Format: Kindle
Goodreads
BookBub
Get Your Copy at: Amazon

The Sandman is seventeen-year-old Nora’s closest friend and best-kept secret. He has to be, if she doesn’t want a one-way ticket back to the psychiatrist. It took her too long to learn not to mention the hooded figure in her dreams to her mother, who still watches Nora as if she’ll crack. So when Nora’s friends start mysteriously dying gruesome deaths in their sleep, she isn’t altogether surprised when the police direct their suspicion at her. The Sandman is the only one she can turn to for answers. But the truth might be more than she bargained for…
For the last five years, the Sandman has spent every night protecting Nora. When he hid the secret to the Nightmare Lord’s escape inside her dreams, he never expected to fall in love with her. Neither did he think his nemesis would find her so quickly, but there’s no mistaking his cruel handiwork. The Nightmare Lord is tired of playing by the rules and will do anything to release his deadly nightmares into the world, even if that means tormenting Nora until she breaks.
When the Nightmare Lord kidnaps Nora’s sister, Nora must enter enemy territory to save her. The Sandman is determined to help, but if Nora isn’t careful, she could lose even more than her family to the darkness.

The Sandman is real!?

Dream Keeper by Amber R. Duell is a spectacular and surprising read. Nora and the Sandman are complex individuals who find love in the land of Dreams. However, when Nora’s dreams spill into the real world, things get messy.

Nora

Nora is young, and she has been hiding part of her from everyone in her life but the Sandman. He is her confidant and an imaginary friend even though he is real to her, no one in her world believes he exists. Nora doesn’t talk about the Sandman because when she does, her family makes her see doctors.

I liked that Nora was willing to risk everything for the ones that she loves. I thought that it was really great to see Nora with friends and family. You could see that even though she spent time in the dream world every night, she has a life in the real world too. However, Nora is impulsive and naïve. She puts herself at risk when waiting even a few hours could be all the difference.

The Sandman

Sandman aka Ben, is magical. He represents all the light or good in our dreams. Sandman is also noble, but not perfect. He started this mess by containing the Dream Weaver, but not thinking it through. Then he was so obsessed with protecting Nora after making her the Dream Keeper that he forgot what his enemy was capable of.

I liked that Sandman protected Nora and that he came to the real word to do so. I also think the description of him with the violet eyes and the moving tattoos is so marvelous. I can totally see him in my mind. One thing that I don’t like about the Sandman is that he didn’t fully trust Nora. Yes, he gave her the dream to keep and believed that she keep it, but he didn’t trust her enough to tell her everything that she needed to know. He also didn’t act his age and yet I kind of got that. Sandman really didn’t have much contact with humans other than the children who believed in him.

Random thoughts

The cover is so beautiful. It made me stop and read the plot twice before committing to read this book.
I loved the story. It is so complex and yet it stems down to the basic, actions have consequences.
I also liked that there are three worlds here. The Dream World, the real world and the Land of Nightmares.
The Sandman and the Dream Weaver were lonely. They really didn’t have anyone. Well, before Nora.
The biggest lesson that Nora learned was not to completely trust anyone from the Nightmare world.
The Nightmare world was so complex, repulsive and yet it sounds amazing. Not everything in the Nightmare world is dangerous, only the things that you are personally afraid of. Which make sense because not everyone is afraid of the same things.
I felt so bad for Katie. She was a shiny pink normal girl, and now she is going to need some serious counseling. I also get her fear of clowns. That would have been the worst imaginable nightmare for me.
This story has an ending, sort of, not a cliffhanger but we need another book — good thing the author plans on making it a trilogy.

Four Stars

Dream Keeper by Amber R. Duell a fabulous fantasy. I loved the way she was able to take the old Sandman stories and bring them to life with an updated feel. This dark fantasy does have a couple of horribly gory descriptive scenes, but nothing like Stephen King novels.

Anyways until the next time enjoy this review brought to you by,

About Amber R. Duell

Amber R. Duell was born and raised in a small town in Central New York. While it will always be home, she’s constantly moving with her husband and two sons as a military wife. Before becoming published, she had a wide range of occupations including banking, bartending (though she’s never tried alcohol), and phlebotomy (though she faints with needles). She also volunteered as a re-enactor at the local Revolutionary War fort and worked near shelter cats which led to her previous crazy cat lady status.

She does her best writing in the middle of the night, surviving the daylight hours with massive amounts of caffeine. Her favorite stories are dark with a touch of romance and a villain you either love to hate or hate to love.

When not reading or writing, she enjoys snowboarding, embroidering, snuggling with her cat, and staying up way too late to research genealogy. She loves to travel and has visited more countries than states. Kissing the Blarney Stone and hand-feeding monkeys in the mountains of France will be hard to beat, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to find the next real-life adventure.

The above is from the author’s website.

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