I liked this better than the first book, Wake. Unlike Wake, this one had some exciting action. Janie is recruited by the police to use her dream catching ability (and her teacher seducing ability) to take the lead on Operation Catch The Creepy Teacher (due to a tip, the police suspect that there is a rapist teacher at Janie's high school; they just don't know who it is). The plot was action-packed and even though I mostly guessed right, there were still surprises when the mystery was finally revealed. I was also pretty nervous about Janie's ability to successfully keep out of Creepy Teacher's grasp. I'm still not super excited about the romance; Team Janie and Cabel just doesn't do it for me, but I think their relationship is sweet and I like them together.

On the other hand, the resolution of the Creepy Teacher story line was pretty ridiculous. (view spoiler)[ The teacher date rape drugged the ENTIRE Chem class. I mean, really? Excellent way to get caught, dumbass. He had the girls in the bag. He could've seduced and slept with them individually. Why drug the entire class? Including the guys? And then the other teacher and the coach were ALSO rapists? There was like a whole teacher rape gang? Oookay. Way to be subtle there, guys. (hide spoiler)]

The dreams still don't make sense. Why are everyone's dreams so damn relevant? Would the girl really dream about being raped per se or more general stress dreams of being attacked/silenced/smothered (i.e., mauled by bears or chased and smothered by pillows or something)? I really feel like McMann doesn't remember her own dreams.

And Old Lady Dreamcatcher is...what...a ghost? She's dead and yet in Janie's dreams. And then she appears to move on in the end. I don't understand that.

Janie's dreamcatching ability is disappointing. She doesn't really get better at it, in the sense that despite getting some cool new tricks (pausing, looking around the dream) she still can't really keep herself from getting sucked in. I would really have preferred Janie being able to create some kind of mental shield. (view spoiler)[Oh, and Janie's going to become crippled and blind from dreamcatching? Why? Is dreamcatching supposed to be some kind of metaphor for Huntington's or something? There is no reason dreamcatching should have such debilitating side effects. I'm kind of angry about this. McMann shoves a lot of shit into Janie's life: the alcoholic mother, the dreams, the rapist teachers, the damaged boyfriend, the flaky friend, the inability to drive for fear of crashing. Why the blindness and crippling in addition? There's no point to the side effects. It adds no good additional drama. It just adds unnecessary tragedy. (hide spoiler)]

This is a trilogy and I'm on the fence whether I really want to read the 3rd one. It just seems like it's wallowing and plotless. I dunno, this is a great concept but I feel like McMann doesn't do as much with it as she could. It's more like she wants to write the Depressing Life of A Modern Teenager genre of book (which I tend to avoid when possible) and stuck a supernatural element in it. It's not the normal High School Teenage Romance With a Supernatural Twists that I thought it was.