YA Review: Dream On (The Silver Trilogy #2) by Kerstin Gier

I have been a huge fan of this author, ever since I first read the first book in her other series, Ruby Red.  I loved the first book in this series, Dream a Little Dream, and when I emailed the publisher last year, they sent me an ARC of that title. This year even though I emailed and requested an ARC of Dream On, I never heard back.  So when I found someone had a copy to offer in the #booksfortrade deals, I jumped on it right away!  So now I have a matching set of ARCs for this series. One thing I love is how the book titles are song titles, ones that play in my head every time I think them.   And just like with the first book, I loved this one, the characters, and I can't wait to see what will happen next!  If you haven't read the first book, you should probably stop reading now, and go click on the link above to read my review of the first book. There will unfortunately have to be some spoilers for that first book.

Where we pick back up, Liv and Henry are still going into their dreams.  Partly to meet up with each other, and get to spend some alone time together, as they are now dating.  Grayson and the other members of the group that used to go into the dreams in the first book have all stopped, as far as they know anyway.  Anabel is in a mental institution, Arthur, her boyfriend, has had to move away due to what had gone down at the end of the last book.  Now, Liv isn't just going into the dreams to see Henry, when we first start reading, she's going into a guy named Charles' dream.  She's going in order to find out if he is interested or what he thinks about their nanny, Lottie.  She misses out on finding what he thinks when all of a sudden there is a dark, threatening, yet invisible presence somewhere that Liv can't find.  When she goes running for her own dream door, she runs into Henry.  He doesn't believe her at first, because he didn't feel it.  Soon there is a weird guy running around who says his name is Senator Tod Nord. Which they figure out means something else.  So not only are there weird things going on in the dream world, but then Liv's younger sister Mia starts sleepwalking, and acting funny.  Talking about a "fake" Liv. 

Out in the real world, things are dramatic as well. There is always Mrs. Spencer, Ernest's - Liv's mother's boyfriend that they're living with, mother.  And she is often called the beast, until they finally give her the nickname of the Boker.  She is a horrible woman, and makes Liv, Mia, Lottie, and their mom's lives horrible at times.  When Mia and Liv come up with a way to get some revenge, with a little bit of vandalizing to something in Mrs. Spencer's front yard, well, let's just say that it kind of backfires.  In a way that even Grayson, one of the twins they live with, the one that is actually kind of friends with Mia and Liv, even he will be disappointed in them.  Not only is there the threatening presence in the dreams and in Mia's dreams, but when Liv follows Henry one night, she finds him in a room with a little bit older woman, naked, along with everyone else there.  And he won't tell her what is going on, other than to say it isn't what she thinks it is.  It's not just that, but also Henry is very private about his family, not really letting Liv come over and meet them.  And when the Tittle-Tattle Blog continues to run stories about Liv and Henry, making public secrets that make her even more insecure about their relationship. 

So now Liv is having to worry about Mia's safety in the real world, Grayson being upset with her for real life stunts, Henry not being open and kind of breaking up with her, and then not knowing just what or who it is in their dreams now haunting them.

We get some wrap up at the end, this isn't a total cliffhanger at all.  But there is enough left that I am very ready for the next book, and can't believe I'm now waiting another year.  Hmm. Wonder if I can get the German version of the third book that has already been published, and get my sister to translate it for me.  :-)  I love these characters, Liv, and Henry, and Grayson.  I could sit and read their world forever.  Another great book from this author.  I have seen some people DNFing it due to less action. And I can see what they are saying.  It is in no way like the first book, in a way it may have a bit of the second book slump, but I love the characters so much, and there were still some really good bits of story in, and I was still very happy.

Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy #1) by Kerstin Gier

First, thanks to Henry Holt and Company Books for Young Readers, as well as Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this back in December.  For some reason I thought it was going to be published in January, so I read it earlier than I probably had to. But the only bad thing about that, is that now I have to wait even longer than I thought for the next book in the series to be published I guess, and I LOVED this one!  I was a huge fan of the Ruby Red trilogy, and so was very excited to see this come available on Edelweiss.

The main character in this book is Liv, short for Olivia.  Her mother and father are divorced, and she has a younger sister named Mia.  Their mother travels for her job a lot, and so they have lived in many different places.  The book begins with the current move to London.  When they arrive they find out that the little cottage they'd been looking forward to living in has been replaced with an apartment in town. The reason?  Their mother seems to have fallen in love.  They meet this man, who is nice enough.  He has twins, Grayson and Florence who are a little older than Liv.  They both go to the school where Liv and Mia will be able to go now.  And the night they first meet at a dinner, it seems that they are going to be moving to live in the same house together.  When Liv makes a mess on her clothes, she ends up borrowing a sweatshirt from Grayson.  Later that night she runs into Grayson in her dreams.  As well as some other boys that go to her school.  Of course she knows she is just dreaming, and she's always had pretty vivid dreams that she can remember.  This dream seems to be more real feeling though.  And the next day when she sees all the boys at school, it is as if they remember the dream too.  Soon the boys have a proposition for Liv.  They want her to help them out with a game they started about a year ago.  A game they started with a girl named Anabel, who has since moved away.  The "game" had to deal with raising a demon, and one of the caveats was that one of the participants had to be a virgin.  Turns out Anabel wasn't what they needed.

Grayson, and one of the other boys, named Henry, both kind of try to talk Liv out of joining them. But her curiosity wins out and she joins in. The realistic dreams and other things really have her attention.  And Liv loves a good mystery, or puzzle, one that she has to solve. The more complicated, the better.  Along the way it seems maybe Henry might be a pretty good guy, and maybe, just maybe, he might feel the same way about her that she is feeling about him.

I just love the way the author writes her characters, just like in the Ruby Red trilogy, I love the sarcastic conversation.  I love that Liv will catch herself when she is describing Henry with very sappy, silly words like, "had I really just thought his hair looked like spun gold in this light?"  I also love that their dog, Princess Buttercup, is a dachshund!!  My favorite type of dog.  The only thing I didn't like?  That the ending seemed to be pretty much wrapped up, until a little twist at the end.  But, the good thing about that is that it means there are more stories with these characters that I love so much for me to read.  If only I read German so that I could read the 2nd one already!  If you loved the author's earlier trilogy, I think you'll love this one as well.

One last fun thing, the door on the cover is basically Liv's door in the dream world.  Everyone has a door to their dreams.  At the end of the book, the author tells what her dream door would look like, and then asks the readers what would their door look like?  I'm thinking mine would be pink and have a doorknob with a dachshund head, or else a door knocker that was a dachshund that would bark it's head off when someone knocked. 

Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

I've wanted to read this book since  first saw it on the shelf in the bookstore where I work.  Then a while back it was on sale for like $1.99 for the e-book, and so I bought it.  Plus, I got an ARC of the 3rd book, Emerald Green, so now I had a reason to go ahead and get it read!  And with doing my November is for Novellas Challenge, I've pretty much only read books on my Nook between the challenge and the e-galleys I needed to read before they expired, so this fell into that category.  Let me say that I wasn't really disappointed, the story was really good, one that you don't want to put down.  In fact, yesterday on my lunch break I got to where there were only 15 pages left in the book, but I had to put it down and go back to work.  I was not happy.
Okay, the first thing I want to get out of the way is the only negative I have.  And what that is, well, it is the science teacher in me again.  I have always read, or seen in movies, or just figured that anything that changed something in the past, would automatically change the future.  The whole Butterfly Effect, you know?  And honestly, I don't really see that happening in this story.  Something that happens in all the time travel stories, Back to the Future, The Time Machine, A Sound of Thunder.  I think it was even alluded to in Looper.  So, moving past that point, I did really like the story like I said earlier.  But this one thing is what kept me from giving it a 5 star review on Goodreads.
The story is about Gwyneth, and her perfect cousin Charlotte.  They come from a family of time travelers.  Well, not everyone, there is one in each generation it seems.  It was both Gwyneth and Charlotte's aunt Lucy who was the time traveler.  Now it seems that Charlotte is supposed to be the one who will carry the gene for time traveling, as she was born on the right day.  A day that supposedly Isaac Newton had calculated.  Gwyneth was born the day after, and so hasn't been raised like Charlotte, with lessons to prepare for traveling to different time periods by learning history, or different countries by learning languages, and even learning fencing and other self defense strategies.  But on the day that it seems will probably be Charlotte's first day to travel, Gwyneth seems to be having the sympathetic dizziness and queasiness that Charlotte is told will signify her first time travel.  But until she has actually traveled, they can't get her registered into the Chronograph which will help to control when and where and how long they time travel for.  Well, as you might guess, Gwyneth turns out to be the one who does the time traveling.  So now she has to make up for all the years of not being trained, and her mother has some explaining to do on how this could be.  Now, I didn't mention yet, but her Aunt Lucy stole the chronograph and ran back into the past with one of the other family's time travelers.  Now the other family, the de Villiers seem to have the male heirs.  In this time it is Gideon, who is a few years older than Gwyneth.  And at first, he seems pretty stuck up and condescending to her.  After all, she's not been trained, he doesn't know her like he knows Charlotte, and Gwyneth has always seemed like one of the silly girls he went to school with.  So now Gwyneth must travel in time to do the missions that will complete the 2nd chronograph, without the training, and with someone who seems to have no respect for her.
Again, I really enjoyed the story.  One very neat thing, is that this was originally in German, and has been translated.  And I guess in German speaking countries it is a very popular series.  So now I'm going to get the sequel, Sapphire Blue, from the library, so I can go on to read my ARC of Emerald Green.