in my dreams I hold a knife: an attempt at academia murder
- paigenherbooks
- Nov 27, 2022
- 6 min read
3/5
I finished this book in two days.
It was exciting, interesting, and being told in dual POV, with hints of an academia flourish, it was right up my alley for a good book, and that's exactly what In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is, a good book. It has an interesting enough plot and writing style that kept me glued to the pages, with likable enough characters that I was invested in the story, and had hints of a dark academia vibe that it complemented the plot well. Though, the characters weren't amazing, especially our main character, which took away from the story and in some ways this story felt trivial. Like it was all one big over reaction of immature characters who don't know how to be honest or process their emotions.
That being said I did enjoy Ashley Winstead's novel and will proudly mark it as a solid 3, when it comes to thrillers.
(Also I love the title v.s the cover. Small details like that make me LOVE being a reader.)
Synopsis: At an elite college, 8 different students come together and become friends. But then in the final year, one friend gets murdered, another gets accused of the murder, and the other six remain witnesses to everything.
Lets start with the plot.
The story was interesting, I wanted to know who murdered Heather, why they did it, and how it was all going to come to light in the end.
But that's about it.
It was just "who done it" type of murder where everyone had some kind of motive to make them a suspect. With flashes of secrets coming out and the characters alongside the readers connecting the dots, the story started to get clearer and clearer. I will say the author did a pretty decent job of making me suspect a few of the characters. I was sitting in my bed thinking "oooo she could've done it" or "oh no no it was totally him". Though none of the evidence was totally damning in my opinion. The secrets or the "dirt" needed to be more in my opinion. Give me tax evasion from another country and you're being hunted, or a cold-blooded killer sitting next to you in class, or even secret societies hiding horrible things...not just being homosexual and using steriods. Everything felt pretty shallow for the most part which made it hard to seriously take some of the characters as a suspect for the murderer.
The twist.
The plot twist was interesting, I didn't totally see it coming but in some ways I did? I'm not entirely sure how to explain it without totally giving away the ending, but before the big reveal I was staring at the page saying "oh my gosh BLANK did it" and sure enough there was the big confession. It wasn't a total shock but at the same time I wasn't totally expecting it throughout the whole novel, so it was a little "aha!" moment that I enjoyed for sure.
The ending.
The ending felt very much "Clue" like, which I didn't totally hate. It's a nice little ending with seemingly everything tied up in a nice little bow. The murderer has been caught, people's names have been cleared, love is reignited, and everyone can back to living their lives. It's just a little tooooo much for me.
I like a good solid ending, but I didn't really think any of the characters deserved a bowtie ending, at all.
Which brings me to our characters.
We are introduced to the East Seven, a group of inseparable seven classmates at Duquette University. They're the best of friends, almost gods on their campus, they are the "IT" group. But obviously they all have their secrets and the East Seven isn't as perfect as everyone may think...it's a little cliche I'll admit but sometimes this plot line can really work. In some cases such as "If We Were Villains" or "The Secret History", but in this case I felt like the novel was having massive imposter syndrome.
The story tries so hard to craft an alluring and slightly intoxicating group of friends tied together by dark secrets, lust, drugs, murder, and more at their ridiculously expensive college. I felt as if it was reaching too hard to live up or sit next to IWWV or The Secret History on the shelf, but sadly it just falls short. I blame that largely on the character development we are given throughout the novel.
Jessica Miller is our main character.
She's just normal ol' Jessica who has to work harder than everyone else to be better, prettier, smarter, etc. She's annoying. Jessica was just an annoying narrator to read from. Like girl, how about you just shut up and exist? Her complex with being perfect and just like the "plain Jane" character everyone was in love with was just annoying. Giving me YA 2012 novel war flashbacks.
Which don't get me wrong I LOVE a good book where that is the premise, but not when that's not the main point of your novel.
Coop
The bad boy that is infatuated with Jessica. I liked Coop, mostly because of his dark hair, leather jacket, and "I can fix him" vibes he was giving off, but he was soooooo cookie cutter. He sold drugs, he came from a rough life, and he loved Jessica and would even change for her, which would have been fine, except there was NO chemistry. No giggling or kicking my feet, no butterflies, literally nothing. I couldn't care less that Jessica was fucking Coop, other than the fact that Coop seemed to care about her. Which was nice and sweet, but why. "She's just like every other bitch". Maybe I'm projecting but I just found her so boring and a bad person. None of her motivations are rooted within any kind of reason. She continues to make bad choices, again and again and again, and she never learns from them. Ever.
Mint
Another cookie cutter character, at this point we could have a tea party. Mint was rich, he's hot, and every girl wants him, but who does he go for? Jessica. Again, another relationship with zero chemistry or even reasoning behind why. Mint was the rich boy with family issues at home who had unchecked anger issues and a complex from the misogynistic gods themselves.
Frankie, Jack, Caro, Courtney
I'm lumping them in as there's not a lot to dissect here. We have the football wanna be star, the "good" golden retriever boy, the religious girl who feels like she doesn't fit in, and the honorary frenemy friend they put up with for no reason.
I don't care about any of these people's issues, secrets, or them.
At all.
Heather
Heather is the one who is murdered and she might even beat Jessica at being just plain. She's described as not very pretty or even interesting, yet everyone loves her and she gets everything she wants. I know that's probably to make it easy to kill her off as well as give everyone some kind of motive to kill her but GOODNESS can we get some depth from literally anyone, please.
The main issue is that not only do none of these characters come off as likable or intriguing, they are just bland. They are lacking the dark ferocity that makes them alluring, laking the witty commentary, or the dark secrets that are actually hidden. The grimy details, the sleaziness, the just outpour of darkness from their souls. If you're going to write a dark academia or murder mystery thriller surrounding a tight knit of "IT" friends, you have to have something that ties them together, darker secrets, love affairs that the readers actually care about.
They have to likable or so hate-able that we just can't help but love them. Unfortunately this novel doesn't do any of that, which leaves me not caring at all about these characters . There was no indoctrination of the reader into these tight knit group of characters. We weren't initiated or drawn in, in a way that made us feel like we were one of them, so why would I care who was the murderer, why would I care that Jessica slept with the teacher?
Why would I care at all?
These are just words on a page, invoking no sense of urgency or pain, pleasure, or really any emotion for the characters or the story line as a whole.
That being said, you're probably wondering if I even liked the book. I did. I wanted to know who did it, and I kept wanting darker or more "gross" secrets to be leaked. I was reading, devouring, in hopes that I would find something dark and mysterious, dark and ugly. I sadly did not. But, my expectations for these kinds of novel is very high, which is why I still enjoyed the story at a very shallow face value that it provided.
In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is a little, fun, fast paced thriller that has hopes of living up to the academia novels that surround itself in grime, murder, and literature--though she falls quite short. It's a nice little passing read, and one I would probably recommend to someone who wanted a quick "who done it" mystery thriller.
I liked it, didn't love it.
Which is perfectly fine, I enjoyed the journey of figuring out who murdered Heather and why, even if I didn't actually care.
So, here's to books we finish but don't love and stories with cookie cutter characters who still give a decent storyline.
Happy reading :)
xoxo
paige <3
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