Here’s one for all you 🥰cozy capitalists!🤑

Do you love slaving away under a capitalist system and want everyone to just get on board and be happy about it? Do you love reading about the redeeming qualities of the quirky wealthy elite? Do you want your fantasy world to be nearly unrecognizable from the real world? If you answered yes to all of these questions, this book is for you!

This book has such a fun and whimsical premise, but I’m afraid that it gave absolutely ✨nothing.✨ The world building was half-baked, the characters were two-dimensional, and the plot was practically non-existent. This isn’t the worst book I’ve read this year, but it’s pretty close! I was warned by a friend before reading that it was pretty disappointing, and I think that’s a very mild way of putting it.

Into the nitty gritty of why this book didn’t work for me (spoilers ahead!)

World Building

1. It seems like there are humans and non-humans in dreamland but some of the humans are actual humans on earth who only come there when they’re sleeping and other humans are natives and only exist there, like Penny? Why and how? Why do the natives also need to eat and sleep? How is there existence different than the humans on earth? Where do they go when they’re sleeping and sleep?
2. How does the economy work? Why is this dreamland dimension capitalist? What determines the value of emotions received from dreamers? Are emotions/currency only extracted from humans on earth or are they also extracted from the natives? Can’t the natives just extract their own emotions for an infinite money glitch?

Characters

1. Penny is just constantly bumbling around. I guess it’s because she needs to be the reader’s guide and have things explained to her so that we can have them explained to us but it feels really ridiculous the way she just inserts herself and says stupid things for our sake. How did she get the job at the department store? She told the dark dream maker, “why don’t you just make happy dreams?” Which seems like something people would ask him all the time and which would be annoying, but for some reason it makes him like her?
2. Santa Clause is a dream maker. Ok. Why not? Honestly, the other dream makers are so 2 dimensional and personality-less, Santa Clause does a lot of the heavy lifting in character work.
3. Dallergut feels like a cheap rip off of more well-known whimsical, wise old men like a Dumbledore. Most of the other main characters are characterized by a singular personality trait (neat-freak, ADHD-core, Speedy, etc.).

Plot Penny gets a job and the plot is just her learning about the department store for the next year. There are mini-plots within this that show us bits of lives of dreamers. I saw many people on reviews and forums saying they were more interested in these side quest plots than anything else and I have to agree. But even then, they’re pretty basic and don’t go much further in theme than “pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Take care of yourself and the rest will follow.” Absolutely no analysis of some of the material or social conditions that affect these peoples’ situations. Regardless, there’s no real arch of rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion. It’s pretty much introduction the whole way through.

Writing Style This one is super subjective, but the writing style just wasn’t for me. It felt like it was holding my hand and spoon-feeding itself to me. There are so many times where it would hint towards something very obviously and Penny wouldn’t get it and would have it spelled out for her. It made me feel like the author thinks I’m too dumb to get what she’s talking about, or that she didn’t have enough confidence in her own writing skills to describe things accurately without coming out and saying exactly what she was getting at. Everything was spelled out explicitly, leaving no room for any sort of analysis or critical thinking. This made the story feel very narrow and stifling, as well as quite juvenile.

I didnt hate this book, but it was quite difficult to feel motivated to keep reading it. I honestly feel like this would make a cute children’s book, but as adult fiction, it just didn’t work for me.