Author: Angie Hockman
What would you do if your dream man turned out to be real?
When law student Cass Walker wakes up after surviving a car accident, she is flooded with memories of her boyfriend, Devin. The only problem? Devin doesn’t exist. But everything she remembers about him feels so real, like the precise shade of his coffee-brown eyes; the texture of his favorite hand-me-down scarf; even the slightly crooked angle of his pinkie, broken after falling off a trampoline in third grade. She knows he’s a figment of her imagination—friends, family, and doctors confirm it—but she still can’t seem to get him out of her head.
So when she runs into the real Devin a year later in a Cleveland flower shop, she’s completely shocked. Even more surprising is that Devin actually believes her story, and soon they embark on a real-life romance. With her dream man by her side and an upcoming summer job at a prestigious law firm, Cass’s future seems perfect. But fate might have other plans…
After greatly enjoying Shipped, I was excited to learn that Angie Hockman had a new novel coming soon, Dream On. This novel did not disappoint as it was enjoyable from start to finish. While the stories may be different between the two novels, there is the essence of the author’s style that nicely ties the two books together. The concept of this story sounded very intriguing as the main character wakes up from a coma believing she has been dating a certain man and when the two meet, the two start to spend time together. I was skeptical, at first, about how the man would willingly go along with this premise, and I am pleased to say that I enjoyed how it turned out.
Cass Walker wakes up after being in an almost week-long coma with memories of a man named Devin complete with him giving her flowers and sharing dances. Unfortunately, Devin is not real, or at least it seems to others. Cass is certain that everything is real. About a year passes and Cass is still working on putting her life back together after the accident when she enters a flower shop, Blooms and Bubbles and encounters Devin Szymanski. Cass ends up explaining her memories and Devin and his older brother Perry decide to humor Cass to see if these memories were real.
As she just accepted a summer job at a law firm, Cass is excited to return to her career since the accident derailed it a year prior. She deals with a lot of stress from this as she wants to do well and eventually make it a lasting career, but it is easier said than done. There is a lot of inner turmoil that Cass goes through during the story as she questions her memory, her career, her potential romance, and herself. The romance moves at a very slow pace, so if you are not a fan of slow burns, then this may not be the book for you.
Overall, the concept of this story is what brought me in along with the adorable cover. I enjoyed Angie’s writing as there was some nice complexity to the plot compared to it all seeming forced. There is a slight love triangle that forms, which was not quite for me, but it did end up making sense in the end. Some side stories (unfortunately I do not want to spoil anything) were unnecessary as they did not get the time they deserved, but the main story was still enjoyable. I loved how the bizarre idea of imagining a boyfriend played out during Cass’s journey and how it all worked out in the end. This novel makes me continue to enjoy the author’s work and I cannot wait to read more in the future.
**I want to give a special thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Gallery Books, for a review copy of this entertaining novel. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.**
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