Ryan La Sala’s debut book, Reverie, is a dynamic, action-packed adventure that digs into the worlds between fantasy and reality. It asks a central question that carries the plot of the book forward—what makes reality real?
Reverie follows Kane Montgomery, a teenage boy who was found half dead in a river and who has no memories of his past. The bits of memory that remain are confusing and leave him with more questions than answers. Nevertheless, he is determined to find out more about the circumstances of his incident and life pre-memory loss.
While searching for answers, he meets Ursula, a girl who he learns was his best friend. She is cautious around him and they build an uneasy friendship. When he goes back to school , he learns he had two other friends in his group — Elliot and Adeline.
But not everything is what it seems. He find out about the mysterious world he used to be involved with after overhearing his friends talk about him behind his back. He learns that they called themselves The Others. The group possess magical powers that help them control the reveries. Reveries are people’s inner fantasies that play out in the real world. They follow story lines and their constructed worlds are fragile and dangerous. Kane and his group of friends are able to stay lucid during them and guide the reveries to a natural finishing place. Disrupting a reverie before it ends can cause catastrophic problems. The crew are experts at handling them, and in one particular scene make light of some of their crazier adventures by recounting old stories.
This book is flashy in all the right ways, especially with the deliciously wicked Dr. Posey. There has never been a villain so fabulously nefarious in recent YA book history. Dr. Posey is a drag queen sorceress who wants to rip the seams of reality as Kane knows it.
Be warned—some of the explanations of the mechanics of the world are blink and miss. This is a book that you really have to close read, because it’s very easy to get lost in it. Like Kane—you’ll be stuck wondering how you got there in the first place.
The reveries themselves are some of the most interesting aspects of the book. Each mini world unravels different parts of the plot—it feels like puzzle pieces coming together. It’s almost like reading a fanfiction AU of the book—in realtime. Stylistically, the reverie fantasy sequences, let La Sala write in different genre styles all while staying within the same story which was compelling to read.
Described as Inception meets The Magicians, Reverie is a must read for fans of dream bending, magic heavy stories. It’s a roller coaster of a read with vibrancy that glows beyond its pages.
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