In Dreams Begin [Paperback]

Plot Summary: Career-minded Laura has just gotten married, and she admits that she's not crazy-in-love with her husband, Amit. She's an unromantic sort of person, so when she dreams of a trip back in time to Victorian England, and she meets a handsome poet, she figures her subconscious has some issues to work out. Laura soon realizes that her trips back in time are real, and she's divided between the past and the present.

In Dreams Begin started out so well, but at some point I was left behind in the dust. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. The story opens with modern couple Laura and Amit on their wedding day. The bride wore black, because she's practical enough to want to use the dress again, and on their wedding night Laura dreams that she's transported into the body of an Irish woman 100 years into the past named Maud Gonne. Except it's no dream.

Skyler White's novel has a fantastic premise and I was pretty much in love with the first part of the book, but then it went no where and it did nothing. On that first foray into the past, Laura meets the poet W. B Yeats ("call me Will") while in Maud's beautiful body, and the reader is supposed to believe that they literally fall in love at first sight. I might have been able to buy this premise if their subsequent meetings built on this miraculous emotional connection, but it seemed to me that it was all about their sexual escapades, and I find those kinds of romances hollow and false. My frustration over this relationship made the rest of the book a difficult to swallow.

What carried me to the end was the dark eroticism that Skyler White writes so well, and the hope that Laura would come to some kind of epiphany. I only wish that I was as satisfied with the ending as the heroine herself.

I've read a lot of time-travel books, and Skyler's take on a modern woman's experience falling into Victorian Britain through a magical rite is one of the most sensual, satisfying, and unusual ones I've found. The book is dense, more poetry than prose in many ways, and weaves together the stories of many relationships into a tight cord so that it's hard to put down. It reminds me of Iris Murdoch in its richness. It's delightful to have White's second book share a few details with her first but otherwise be a very different story, and I can't wait to see what she decides to share next.

In Dreams Begin is such interesting for me, in concept and execution. Though I think there are a lot of people out there that are like "W B who?" and who would hate a storyline that bounces back and forth between past and present (and between different characters bodies), these things really attracted me to it. I'm not going to lie, I like me some poetry, Yeats included. And I also am a fan of stories that strive to recreate or even rewrite the life of a real person, not in a biographical way, but as a work of fictitious art. It fascinates me. I also like stories that shift back and forth, so long as I don't feel like it's a cheap device used to build suspense and keep me on edge in an otherwise laaame story (I'm talking to you, Dan Brown). Skyler White does it well. When the story shifts -- even frustratingly in the middle of something -- it feels natural and real, not gimmicky. I liked both worlds that were created, and I like who Laura is in both.

The romance, too, worked for me. Things come quick, and you know I'm normally not a fan of that, but in this, again, it felt right. It worked for the story and the fantastical aspects of it. All of this -- the time-shifting, the body-switching, the revolutionary ideals, all of it work together in this grand way to create a sense of destiny, in which case the romance between Laura and Yeats doesn't seem at all far-fetched: it seems fated. I feel a little differently about Ida, the little nutjob, and her 'romance' but the fact is, I liked her, too, and it worked on its own level. And there was sexytime. Boy, was there sexytime. Occasionally in crypts, but who's counting?

I talked a bit in my review for White's debut and Falling, Fly about her poetic style. There, it didn't always do the story justice, but here it almost always works very nicely. There are times when it's a little overwrought or confusing, but for the most part, White has a knack for phrasing something just so. Things will be going along as normal and then she'll describe something in a certain way, or say such and such of the characters, and it just kind of stops you in your tracks. You can see it. As strange a turn of phrase as it may be, you absolutely know what she means, and your understanding of the situation is expanded. The woman can write a metaphor.

I do have similar warnings as I did in and Falling, Fly, though. This book is not for everybody. Because of the time- and body-switching, it probably could get very confusing for some people, and it definitely takes it out of the 'light read' category; you do have to pay attention. Also, the poetic prose will turn some off and confuse others, without a doubt. And of course, there is AFF's steamy test*. But all in all, I think In Dreams Begin is an improvement over AFF. White has found her niche and created something pretty compelling here. And she made me want to read about the real lives of Maud and Yeats. And that's saying something.