Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.

It’s always so refreshing to come across a paranormal YA novel that is entirely unique — to me, at least. I haven’t read or heard of anything that sounds like The Metaphysical Double Life of Eri Lane, and dove into it happily.

Eri Lane, our hero, is a strange bird. She’s a smart fourteen year old girl in a school for the gifted, and she is indeed gifted (or cursed, depending on how you see it). She’s definitely intense, she’s incredibly thoughtful and intuitive — so much so, in fact, that it’s almost a weird power. Eri’s ability to distill someone’s personality into a single line is an interesting thing to see her work with, especially when she uses it against those she perceives as bullies. From actual bullies to her teachers, seeing how she uses this power to lash out to protect her best friends or herself is interesting.

But what about the actual paranormal stuff, you say? The world of Dream (versus the world of Awake) is so strange and detached and weird, which you’d except from a world made up of people’s dreams. It’s just like our world, but different, and Eri and her best friend Malcolm are tasked as sort of cops of Dream. They fix what needs to be fixed, make sure everything runs smoothly. But something big is happening, someone’s trying to combine the two worlds, which would destroy them, and it falls to Eri to save the world.

The writing in The Metaphysical Double Life of Eri Lane was like taking a long, long trip into someone else’s dream, which makes sense for the subject matter. At times I couldn’t tell if this was because it felt as though the writing needed to be tightened up a little, or it was intentional, but I enjoyed the effect it had. I sort of drifted through the world alongside Eri.

I loved her as a main character; she’s smart, intense, nerdy, is sometimes so good she tips over into bad, and cares for her family and friends so much you can feel it. Her best friends Malcolm, a gay teen who constantly gets bullied, and Ashley, a meek girl, are good enough characters, but don’t really seem to stand on their own. Malcolm gets more time as Eri’s Dream companion, but beyond his family and school problems, it’s hard to put a finger on who he really is. The same goes for most of the secondary characters, from Eri’s senior crush Pete to her mother. Although I have to admit, with what little time her mother gets, she makes an impact.

The mystery of the plot itself — who’s trying to destroy Dream and Awake — is pretty well done, until the moment I realized I knew who the culprit was all along. It’s hard to hold on to the threads of a plot where the important parts of it take place in a dream world, but Jocelyn Nora Moore handles it well. Overall, I think The Metaphysical Double Life of Eri Lane is a nice detour in the paranormal genre if you’re looking for it.