Reverie is a queer contemporary portal fantasy that kept surprising me as I read it, mostly in good ways.


Reverie CoverAll Kane Montgomery knows for certain is that the police found him half-dead in the river. He can’t remember how he got there, what happened after, and why his life seems so different now. And it’s not just Kane who’s different, the world feels off, reality itself seems different.

As Kane pieces together clues, three almost-strangers claim to be his friends and the only people who can truly tell him what’s going on. But as he and the others are dragged into unimaginable worlds that materialize out of nowhere—the gym warps into a subterranean temple, a historical home nearby blooms into a Victorian romance rife with scandal and sorcery—Kane realizes that nothing in his life is an accident. And when a sinister force threatens to alter reality for good, they will have to do everything they can to stop it before it unravels everything they know.

This wildly imaginative debut explores what happens when the secret worlds that people hide within themselves come to light. (Goodreads)
Goodreads

I received an eARC of Reverie via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Reverie is one of the most unusual novels I’ve read in a long time. It’a book where portal fantasy meets inception, which is a really great combination. It was like La Sala had a lot of alternate universe ideas and found a way to work them all together into a cohesive plot that kept me rooted to it.

It needs trigger warnings for memory loss, false memories, police involvement, queerphobic and homophobic microaggressions against the main characters, and the disappearance of minor characters.

You can read the full review here!