REVIEW: Dream Girl by Laura Lippman was a bit of a letdown for me. I have noticed her name out there and know she has a lot of published books. I assume she has a large following so, I decided to give her new book a try. I now understand this is a bit of a departure for this author into horror. I’ve seen it classified as horror, mystery and thriller. I didn’t see it as any of those genres.

I loved the premise of the book. Gerry Andersen is a prize winning author who is laid up in his Baltimore apartment for at least 12 weeks. His assistant does daily care and errands and he has a nurse for the night shift. I didn’t like Gerry. The whole book was pretty much his rambling thoughts as he was laying in his hospital bed. I found it a boring. There weren’t any characters I could identify with or like.

 If you like autobiographies or memoirs, you most likely will like this book even though Gerry is not a real person. It came off a such for me. I don’t usually stay interested in a memoir so probably why this book didn’t hold my interest. This is not a poorly written book. It just wasn’t my kind of book. Give it a try and let me know what you think! 

I received a copy of this book from #Netgalley for a fair and honest review. Thank you! 

SYNOPSIS: In the end, has anyone really led a blameless life?

Injured in a freak fall, novelist Gerry Andersen is confined to a hospital bed in his glamorous high-rise apartment, dependent on two women he barely knows: his incurious young assistant, and a dull, slow-witted night nurse.

Then late one night, the phone rings. The caller claims to be the “real” Aubrey, the alluring title character from his most successful novel, Dream Girl. But there is no real Aubrey. She’s a figment born of a writer’s imagination, despite what many believe or claim to know. Could the cryptic caller be one of his three ex-wives playing a vindictive trick after all these years? Or is she Margot, an ex-girlfriend who keeps trying to insinuate her way back into Gerry’s life?

And why does no one believe that the call even happened?

Isolated from the world, drowsy from medication, Gerry slips between reality and a dreamlike state in which he is haunted by his own past: his faithless father, his devoted mother; the women who loved him, the women he loved.

And now here is Aubrey, threatening to visit him, suggesting that she is owed something. Is the threat real or is it a sign of dementia? Which scenario would he prefer? Gerry has never been so alone, so confused – and so terrified.

Chilling and compulsively readable, touching on timely issues that include power, agency, appropriation, and creation, Dream Girl is a superb blend of psychological suspense and horror that reveals the mind and soul of a writer.