WAKE, by Lisa McMann

BOOK REVIEW, January 2011, by Jenny McWha


Wake by Lisa McMannWAKE
by Lisa McMann

I have to be honest with you, GCDA readers. There are times, while reviewing a book, where I have to put some effort into reading it through the lens of my past fourteen-year-old self. There are some great books for teens out there: but I am no longer a teen, and find myself interested in very different things sometimes than my younger self did.

Wake, by Lisa McMann, is not one of those books!
I literally could not put it down. This rarely happens with teen fiction for me anymore (not that I can’t appreciate what you guys like and enjoy), so it has to be good. Maybe it’s the intense, fast paced writing style. Maybe it’s the fact that McMann has found a subject that not every Young Adult book is about these days (Vampires, anyone?). But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Good: Wake tells the story of high school senior Janie, a girl just trying to get a full-ride scholarship so she can move on from her life with her alcoholic mother. But Janie has a big secret—she gets sucked into other people’s dreams, has since she was little. She’s seen them all, but the worst has to be the nightmares, when the dreamers turn to her and ask her for help and she can’t do a thing. It all changes when she notices Cabel, a greaser who goes through a summer transformation. Around the same time, she enters a nightmare that scares her more than anything else she has seen. 

As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed this book. This is the utter bookworm in me talking, but one thing I loved was the third person narration. I’m sorry, but the influx of first person in teen lit is driving me insane. Onto other things, the pacing of this story was fantastic. It’s read in little snippits, sometimes in five different sections over the course of five to ten minutes of book-time. We don’t spend a lot of time with the characters but they feel real and fleshed-out, the romance doesn’t feel rushed, and there is just the right amount of plot. I can feel that this was always meant to be a trilogy, and this book is really introducing and setting everything up for the next two installments. It still felt like a full story though, even it left me seriously hungering for more. It’s not hard to read and the whole idea of it is definitely unique—I haven’t read anything like it before. 

Downside: I must admit there were times when I wrenched myself out of the narrative and noticed “that’s not a full sentence.” Or, “how is that a paragraph all on it’s own?” McMann needs to use some more commas, but I feel confidant her writing will improve over time. Luckily, this doesn’t really retract from this novel. I also find myself wanting MORE! So it’s nice that the next two books are already out! 

Ages: There are some dreams of a sexual nature, so I would recommend fourteen and up.

Other Books: I would start with the two sequels to Wake: Fade and Gone. Other than that, I’m really not aware of books that are like this. If you want to go the fantasy direction to do with dreams, I recommend Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox (haven’t read it yet but it is sitting on my shelf). 

Rating: Two Thumbs Up

~ Jenny


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