SOLVED. YA Fantasy. Three cousins, children of dream princes, are pulled into the world of dreams and have to find Somnus before they can leave. Told via diary entries. Read in late 2000s. Spoilers ahead. [s]

[[deleted user]]

Read in the late 2000s but had to donate the book when I downsized where I was living. The cover was white with a strip of light green grass and flowers. I can remember basically the entire plot but not the author's name or the book title

Three cousins are brought together when the artist father (named Felix) of one of the cousins dies. The two girls hate each other and there is a scene where one complains that she's washing the scent of her cousin into her skin after she takes a shower after her (scent of orange blossom I think). One of them is popular and has magic powers she hasn't told anyone about, and the other is the artists daughter. They have a male cousin who has been travelling different worlds with his father who they have never met before.

The artist's daughter has been left a painting in his will that's really unlike his other work because it's unfocused and an unrelated topic. The magic girl sees it as a way out, steals it from the artist's daughter and uses it to create a portal in her room by painting it on her wall. The other two cousins follow her in after the artist's daughter discovers it's missing and goes to get it back. They all wake up in a castle and are separated, and being attended to by servant and they find out that their fathers are all Princes of Dream, and they've entered the dream lands. They travel really suddenly to the next place as the travel works like it does in dreams and just happens when you think about it. At one point the two girls are trapped in alternating staircases in a tower but they can hear each other, they have a heart to heart and are friends by the time they reach the top. They eventually get to the end of the dreamlands and find Somnus (Sleep) who is sleeping, the magic girl wakes him up with a kiss and stays behind in the dreamlands while the other two cousins leave and go back to the normal world.

The whole story is told by their parents reading their diaries aloud in a library because they want to know what has happened to their kids and when they go into the dream world their diaries are magically updating with their thoughts. Within here, you find out that the magic girl got her powers from her mother who had also never talked about it. The boy's diary is handmade, and the artist's daughter uses a sketchbook as a diary that she writes in in blue biro (there's a description about it being uncompromising or something, like doing so is unpleasant)

[Becca]

I'm pretty sure this is Waking Dream by Rhiannon Lassiter. The description and reviews here on Goodreads don't give too many details away, but this is the description from Wikipedia:

While attending the reading of her father's will with her mother and stepfather, Bethany meets her cousin Poppy, a spoiled girl who is believed to have magic powers. Bethany is left a mysterious painting in the will; it does not look like a piece he would normally paint. Bethany is unwillingly sent to stay at Poppy's house for the summer. A strange boy called Rivalaun turns up, claiming to be Bethany and Poppy's cousin.

Later on in the book, Poppy gets fed up with all the lies and secrets, so she steals Bethany's painting from her room and paints it on her wall. Poppy uses some kind of magic so that she can walk through into the world of the painting: a world of dreams. Rivalaun and Bethany follow to rescue her. They then cannot get back to the normal world unless they complete a quest.

[[deleted user]]

Yes it is! Thank you so much!