The Wake Trilogy

After looking through past posts, I don't believe I ever reviewed Wake. So this review is for the whole trilogy. 

Title: Wake, Fade, Gone

Author: Lisa McMann

Year Published: 2008-2010

I read the first in this trilogy months ago and finally got to the other two while on the boat. I can say that if I had written a review for just Wake, it would not be as positive as it will be for the whole trilogy.

I thought Wake alone was poor in its development. I had too many questions. It just didn't seem like enough happened. And then suddenly the police were involved and Janie was working for them. It didn't flow for me.

Once I got into Fade and Gone, my questions were answered and everything was made more clear. I took the reality of every situation with a grain of salt. I feel that this series could easily be turned into an episodic television show for a station like ABC Family or the CW. Each of the story lines could be spread out and expanded upon. By the third book, I was excitedly flipping to the next page. I think I may have read Gone in one sitting. 

Although I don't think the series is up to par with some more recent YA trilogies, I enjoyed it. It felt to me like a book I would have picked up at a book fair in middle school, although I was already in college when these books were published. I give this trilogy a 3/5.

-PAUL

Morton's Fork

Finally, the last book of the Dream Catcher trilogy! 

That picture makes me mad with its stupid white background, but I can't figure out how to make it go away.

Look out, there will probably be a ton of spoilers below. Don't read any further if you haven't read the books or if you haven't finished them yet. Unless you like spoilers.

In Gone, Janie deals with so many more issues than just her dream catcher abilities. She starts out the novel spending the weekend with Cabel, his brother, and his brother's wife at their cabin on the lake. She's accepted that she'll be blind and that her body will slowly start to give out as a result of her dream catching. What she hasn't accepted yet is dragging Cabel down with her. Janie sees things in his dreams that scare her and make her doubt their relationship (for example, at one point she sees herself (blind and gnarled) laying on a hospital bed in the kitchen and Cabel goes into the kitchen and yells at her to just shut up and die already).

Janie also has to deal with the appearance of a stranger, who ends up being her father. Once Janie finds out that her father is actually a dream catcher as well who isolated himself, she kind of freaks out. Realizing that she has two options now, she struggles with staying with Caleb and going blind or leaving him and keeping her sight and her body.

Throughout the book, I feel like the relationship between Janie and Cabel is turned into more of a one-sided thing than it had been before. Janie decides that she's going to leave Cabel, but doesn't even tell him that she wants to isolate herself or say goodbye to him. She thinks disappearing would be easier, but I really don't think anybody would agree. Sure, Cabel would probably tell her that she's making a bad decision, but if she's so set on isolating, there's nothing he can really do.

The idea of "Morton's Fork," or having to choose between two equally terrible things, is an interesting concept that I really liked in this book. Janie already knows what's going to happen to her if she continues to be around people and enter their dreams. What she doesn't know, though, is that isolation can be just as bad. Her father's brain exploded because he isolated himself. Having to choose between going blind and all of the things that come with dream catching and having your brain explode kind of sucks. Although I'm pretty sure I'd rather go blind than have my brain explode. Maybe that's just me.

I also liked how Dorothea, Janie's mom, was given a little more depth in this book. In Wake and Fade, Dorothea is presented as simply an alcoholic who cares only about herself. In Gone, however, Dorothea's past with Henry is revealed and her reasons for being an alcoholic are made more clear. Maybe she didn't handle his leaving very well at all, but she's dealing with it in the best way she knows how. McMann causes the reader to feel a little more sympathetic towards Dorothea, even though she just spent two books making you dislike her.

I thought that this book was a very nice conclusion to the trilogy. It dealt more with the emotional side of dream catching, and the repercussions it might have on other people in a dream catcher's life. It also went away from the solving crimes theme that the first two had, and I think that was a good call on McMann's part. You can only have so many novels with the same basic plot in one trilogy. Also, the ending wasn't entirely conclusive, but it also wasn't entirely open-ended. I thought it was a good way to end such an intense series, and I feel like it also left more open to the readers' imagination. You don't need an epilogue detailing what happens 10 years in the future. Make it up yourself.

I am sorry to say goodbye to this trilogy and the characters though. The story line, although dealing with some paranormal things, wasn't like every other paranormal YA novel out there. No vampires, no werewolves, no witches, no dragons... just a girl with special abilities trying to find her place in a world where people aren't at all like her. Well, except for a few people of course. I thought it was very well written and that it flowed together very nicely. Some parts may have been unnecessary or didn't make much sense, but those were few and far between. I would definitely recommend this whole trilogy to anyone looking for a YA book that's out of the ordinary. 

Again, sorry for such a long post! I only have two more to do though until I'm finally caught up and can start The Unwanteds.

--Ashley

Gone

Ok, one last post for now. While I'm still on a roll. 

Title: Gone
Author: Lisa McMann
Year Published: 2010

Synopsis: Janie thought she knew what her future held. And she thought she'd made her peace with it. But she can't handle dragging Cabel down with her. 

She knows he will stay with her, despite what she sees in his dreams.

He's amazing. 

And she's a train wreck. 

Janie sees only one way to give him the life he deserves--she has to disappear. 

And it's going to kill them both.

Then a stranger enters her life--and everything unravels. The future Janie once faced now has an ominous twist, and her choices are more dire than she'd ever thought possible. She alone must decide between the lesser of two evils.

And time is running out...

Why?: Basically, the same as Wake and Fade. I was in Books-A-Million with my mom and I was looking through all the books on clearance (since I'm so cheap I don't like to pay full price for anything) and kept coming across this book and its sequels. It sounded like a very interesting concept, and even though I'm really over the whole trilogy thing, the books were fairly short and I figured it wouldn't take me very long to get through them. I originally intended on the whole series being supplemental reading, but decided to just make the first one my "book of the month" so that Paul would have to read it as well. I wanted to read this one because I enjoyed the first two so much.

Expectations: I really enjoyed Wake and Fade, so I have pretty high expectations for this one. Even more of Janie dealing with the repercussions of being a dream catcher, trying to be a secret agent, and trying to maintain a secret relationship with Caleb. Oh, and let's throw a wrench into the pile and introduce someone who is going to turn her world upside down. I feel like everything she knows about being a dream catcher is about to explode on her, and she'll learn more than she ever wanted to know. Kind of a lot to deal with in one book, but I feel like McMann is more than capable of handling it well.

Judging a book by its cover: Again, pretty much the same as with Wake and Fade: the cover is pretty simple - lots of black with the title and a chair as the only color on the whole cover. I have no idea how the chair will relate to the book, but we'll see.

It's so much quicker to write these when they're so similar to other posts. Thank you, copy/paste.

--Ashley