Dangerous Dreams

Dangerous Dreams is the story of Allie O’Shay, who has exceedingly realistic dreams of the early colonial settlers on Roanoke Island. She begins to realize that she is seeing the past, not just dreaming, and finds herself becoming addicted to their story.

This book was amazing! I could not put it down. However, I didn’t really care for Allie. There was something about her personality that rubbed me the wrong way, but I was utterly enthralled with Emily Colman, the main character of the Lost Colony. I have always been fascinated with that mystery, and I thought the author presented a very plausible theory while making it incredibly entertaining. I honestly felt like I was there, on Roanoke, trying to desperately survive. I didn’t give it five stars only because there were some very graphic parts of intimate encounters–rape, murder, and torture–which were a bit hard to read and would have been nice to know about ahead of time. I, personally, don’t feel like those things need to be present for a book to be enjoyable and captivating. However, I feel like the author did an amazing job being true to the time period and thoroughly did his research. The narrative of the Lost Colony was by far my favorite part, and I think could have carried the book on its own, even without the present-day counterpart. It was very hard to put down, which is saying something, because the book is nearly 800 pages. Overall, it was a very engrossing read.

I would encourage you to read this story if you like historical fiction and if you’ve ever been interested in what happened to the colony on Roanoke Island. I would also encourage you to set aside a pretty large chunk of uninterrupted time to read it, unless you are better at pacing yourself than I am.