Cute, with a strong sense of setting and a good helping of holiday spirit. Rife with tropes and cliches, though, and ultimately not all that special.

Despite the promising premise, the characters and plot development turned out not to be all that interesting, and I found the prose itself a little off-putting.

I know what they say about books and covers, but this one's a pretty good indicator: cute and sweet! Absolutely not groundbreaking in any way, but most of the characters were lovable and the setting was incorporated in a nice way. Some mild mystery to keep the plot interesting, though it seemed to be more about watching them bond over figuring out it than the actual solution (I thought it was all fairly predictable, tbh).

I had pretty reasonable hopes going into this book, but I was disillusioned pretty quickly — although the premise was fascinating (I do love historical fiction, and steampunk can be fascinating if done right) the plot was unoriginal and not particularly well written and executed (love triangle between the older brother's best friend and his older brother? Could you incorporate more tropes?) and I had trouble sympathizing with Charlotte's unforgiving judgmental contempt for basically everyone around her.

If I'm being completely honest, I didn't really like Jim very much — he didn't seem to have much going on besides interacting with other, more interesting characters. And if the narrator isn't great, for me it's really hard to get into the story. Ántonia is cool, of course, but also kind of a mix of stereotypes and clichés. The setting/era might be the most interesting thing about this book, which is disappointing since I prefer character- and plot-driven stories.

I've always been fascinated by dreams and lucid dreaming in particular, but I didn't really like any of the main characters and some of the concepts presented were just too far "out there" for me to suspend disbelief enough to fully enjoy the story.

Classic Ally Carter - girl power with a side of boy fascination, international stakes. Plus,

Spoiler

unreliable narrator and

red herrings everywhere kept things interesting.

To be fair, I'm generally not that interested in romance novels — picked this up because it fulfills part of the reading challenge I'm doing. Not much substance to it, rife with stereotypes and archaic gender roles — James making the pregnancy all about him, even saying that it's harder on the men? ick — but fairly well written, nice family/friend relationships.