Book Talk | The Dream Hotel

I'm walking around the San Antonio Book Festival looking for a new book to read and lo and behold, the cover to this book caught my eye. It has and intriguing cover and an interesting title. I flip it around to the read the synopsis and immediately know it's a book that I would enjoy reading. Skip to six months later and I finally read it. Here is my little review on The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami.

 

A Little About the Author

Laila Lalami is the author of six books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times.  She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University.  She lives in Los Angeles.  Her new novel, The Dream Hotel, was published in March 2025.

A Little About the Book

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom. 

A Little Book Talk  

I enjoyed, but also felt a little ill, whilst reading the futuristic (but also right around the corner) world that is dictated by algorithms and AI. Upon further reading, I found out that our author started working on this novel in 2014. Thinking back to eleven years ago, I could see how a topic like this could still seem so far away. Now only eleven years later, it seems like a very plausible thing to happen within the next five years, and that's a little scary to think about. 

The element I really enjoyed reading in this book were the characters. Despite the futuristic tech, the emotional stakes feel very human. Sara’s longing for her family, her frustration, and her existential fears make her a sympathetic and compelling protagonist.With our other characters that are inside Madison, and some outside, we also see very human reactions to the various situations. After months have passed, we start to feel Sara's husband's faith in her innocence start to dwindle and thus he wants her to comply rather than stick up for the truth. Sara's friends at Madison are mostly reluctant to comply with going on strike with her because they still have hope that they will get out, but one by one, they all lose that hope and become a little more feral in their desperation. All very human responses to an unprecedented situation.

While I enjoyed my time reading the book in it's entirety, I did find the ending to be a little lack-luster. It made sense that they wanted her out after showing defiance and giving her peers hope through staging a strike, but it felt like there were loose-ends that never got a nice bow, just a small knot. For instance, was the CEO woman the one who was in disguise the whole time? Did she find what she wanted? Were there other spies in the facility? What was up with Hinton? What happened to Sara's cousin who was constantly reaching out to her? I know not all questions need to be answered, but I felt like a lot was left for an open-ended conversation and I would have appreciated just a little more insight and little more answers. 

 Overall, I really did like the book, I just think the ending could have been different with more aspects of the story explored a little more. If there is a sequel to this story, or book, I would definitely pick it up. If you're into dystopian novels, then this one will be right up your alley.

 Until next time, Happy Reading!