Rashika, The Book Owl

The Vault of Dreamers was an interesting book to say the least. I didn’t love it to bits and pieces but it was definitely something that got the wheels turning in my head. It’s a book written more to mess with your mind than to actually provide answers so if that’s not your thing, you may want to give this book a pass.

Rosie Sinclair isn’t the brightest thing out there but she served her purpose. That said, there were times when I just wanted to shake her. She could be so impulsive at times and didn't really think things through. Impulsiveness does not help uncover a dystopic plot, in fact, it’s more likely to get you caught.

This was one of the reasons why I spent a good chunk of the beginning being skeptic, I kept on wondering when the other shoe would drop and the book would start reading like a generic dystopia. Luckily, that didn’t happen. That isn’t to say it was unlike a typical dystopia, because it was, in some ways, but it also managed to stand out on it's own.

Linus and Burnham were interesting additions to the story. At first I thought it was going to be some weird love triangle but I was incredibly thankful that that wasn’t the case. I think what upset me about Burnham though was the fact that there was just not enough of him. There were some major things that he could have been a part off but wasn’t. I was also really curious to know what he knew and was upset we never really got to find out. With Linus, I was just never really a 100% sold on him. He was the love interest too so that not a good thing. I was always a little suspicious of him and I never quite felt like he genuinely cared for Rosie. I think a major reason for this could be that the romance was not nearly as well developed as it could have been.

It didn’t come out of nowhere and the L word didn’t pop out of nowhere either but there was just this awkwardness to it. I felt like there was no real transition into a relationship and that’s what made it hard for me to ship the two as a couple.

The world building was a tad disappointing yet really intriguing at the same time. I think the fact that we were kept in the dark was vital to the story but as someone who tends to be more than a little curious, it can be hard to not know all the facts. I closed the book with so many questions on my mind yet at the same time I wasn’t angry that the author didn’t give us more information.

The saving grace of the story was the interesting twist that popped up. I had no idea that the author would choose to go down that road and that’s what made the story stick out to me. It’s what set it apart from all the other dystopias out there. It made me question some of the things the author had already laid out and made me come up with my own theories about what was going on and just made the book a lot more interesting. The twist also made our narrator unreliable which is always fun (but we may have different definitions of fun).

I think the ending was interesting too. In most other cases, I probably would have been really angry but it worked with the context of the story. Given the things this story is dealing with, an easy solution wrapped up with a bow tie just wouldn't work.

Given the way it ended though, I feel like a follow up would be interesting but at the same time, I am content with the way things ended.

Really, if you're just looking for a fun book for a rainy day that is bound to mess with your mind, why not give this a shot?