The Sandman is seventeen-year-old Nora’s closest friend and best-kept secret. He has to be, if she doesn’t want a one-way ticket back to the psychiatrist. It took her too long to learn not to mention the hooded figure in her dreams to her mother, who still watches Nora as if she’ll crack. So when Nora’s friends start mysteriously dying gruesome deaths in their sleep, she isn’t altogether … surprised when the police direct their suspicion at her. The Sandman is the only one she can turn to for answers. But the truth might be more than she bargained for…
For the last five years, the Sandman has spent every night protecting Nora. When he hid the secret to the Nightmare Lord’s escape inside her dreams, he never expected to fall in love with her. Neither did he think his nemesis would find her so quickly, but there’s no mistaking his cruel handiwork. The Nightmare Lord is tired of playing by the rules and will do anything to release his deadly nightmares into the world, even if that means tormenting Nora until she breaks.
When the Nightmare Lord kidnaps Nora’s sister, Nora must enter enemy territory to save her. The Sandman is determined to help, but if Nora isn’t careful, she could lose even more than her family to the darkness.
(Please note: This story contains vivid death scenes.)
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Wow this is definitely a fantastic read. This read grabs you right from the beginning and has you on the edge of your seat. With heart pounding action. There is twists and turns everywhere. This is also a real page turner. I couldn’t stop reading until the end of the book. This is definitely an epic read, that I recommend.
Shauna Joesten
Dream Keeper had me hooked right away!! This book has such an unusual plot, with fascinating creatures (or nightmares), and a great MC, and then there is The Sandman!!
I enjoyed the dual points of view between Nora and Sandman very much!!! In fact, I’m not sure which point of view i could say i like the most!! Sandman is such a great character, but then so isn’t the Weaver!! The Weaver is the creator of nightmares, and the sandman brings you good dreams. Nora is very special to the Sandman, and the Weaver wants to get his hands on her. Why? Because the Sandman has hidden something in her that the Weaver wants, and he will do whatever it takes to get it!!
The writing is a dream, no pun intended!! The plot runs smoothly throughout the story, the pace kept me turning the pages and i couldn’t put it down, and the dialogue between characters made them so real!! I am sooo looking forward to the second book!!! If you haven’t picked up this dark fantasy, DO IT NOW!!!
The Sandman is real!?
Dream Keeper by Amber R. Duell is a spectacular and surprising read. Nora and the Sandman are complex individuals who find love in the land of Dreams. However, when Nora’s dreams spill into the real world, things get messy.
Nora
Nora is young, and she has been hiding part of her from everyone in her life but the Sandman. He is her confidant and an imaginary friend even though he is real to her, no one in her world believes he exists. Nora doesn’t talk about the Sandman because when she does, her family makes her see doctors.
I liked that Nora was willing to risk everything for the ones that she loves. I thought that it was really great to see Nora with friends and family. You could see that even though she spent time in the dream world every night, she has a life in the real world too. However, Nora is impulsive and naïve. She puts herself at risk when waiting even a few hours could be all the difference.
The Sandman
Sandman aka Ben, is magical. He represents all the light or good in our dreams. Sandman is also noble, but not perfect. He started this mess by containing the Dream Weaver, but not thinking it through. Then he was so obsessed with protecting Nora after making her the Dream Keeper that he forgot what his enemy was capable of.
I liked that Sandman protected Nora and that he came to the real word to do so. I also think the description of him with the violet eyes and the moving tattoos is so marvelous. I can totally see him in my mind. One thing that I don’t like about the Sandman is that he didn’t fully trust Nora. Yes, he gave her the dream to keep and believed that she keep it, but he didn’t trust her enough to tell her everything that she needed to know. He also didn’t act his age and yet I kind of got that. Sandman really didn’t have much contact with humans other than the children who believed in him.
Random thoughts
• The cover is so beautiful. It made me stop and read the plot twice before committing to read this book.
• I loved the story. It is so complex and yet it stems down to the basic, actions have consequences.
• I also liked that there are three worlds here. The Dream World, the real world and the Land of Nightmares.
• The Sandman and the Dream Weaver were lonely. They really didn’t have anyone. Well, before Nora.
• The biggest lesson that Nora learned was not to completely trust anyone from the Nightmare world.
• The Nightmare world was so complex, repulsive and yet it sounds amazing. Not everything in the Nightmare world is dangerous, only the things that you are personally afraid of. Which make sense because not everyone is afraid of the same things.
• I felt so bad for Katie. She was a shiny pink normal girl, and now she is going to need some serious counseling. I also get her fear of clowns. That would have been the worst imaginable nightmare for me.
• This story has an ending, sort of, not a cliffhanger but we need another book — good thing the author plans on making it a trilogy.
Four Stars
Dream Keeper by Amber R. Duell a fabulous fantasy. I loved the way she was able to take the old Sandman stories and bring them to life with an updated feel. This dark fantasy does have a couple of horribly gory descriptive scenes, but nothing like Stephen King novels.
Anyways until the next time enjoy this review brought to you by,
Baroness Book Trove.
I received this book for free from YA Bound Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
If you would like to read more reviews like this one, please go to baronessbooktrove.com
I had the pleasure of reading Dream Keeper (The Dark Dreamer trilogy #1) and it blew my mind! I’ve read stories about the Sandman, dream realms, and fantasy before but this one is dark and deliciously twisted. I really liked this book. It’s new and fresh. The writing style is definitely unique and the characters are evolved. I love the world building and the insight into her frame of mind when certain scenes happen. I’m actually really glad I requested this book and I can’t wait to read more from this author. In most books about The Sandman, you expect an air of whimsy and sweetness, but definitely not the depth of emotion and terror the characters feel in this story. I absolutely loved it! 5 stars and definitely 2 thumbs way up!!
If you like darker books with depth, this is for you. I loved the Sandman. I loved Nora. This book tore me apart, put me back together, and tore me apart again! The evil in this book was genuine evil and even frightened me. I’v already recommended it to a friend.
Wow, this book was… insane. When I read the summary for this a while ago, I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into—a fun fantasy romance about the Sandman battling evil. But man, this was DARK. Way darker than I was prepared for and I loved it! It took me a hot minute to get into this story because the beginning was pretty much everything I was expecting. That’s not really a bad thing… Just not that exciting. However, a few chapters in, a girl at the mall stabs herself with a pen and I quickly realized how wrong I was. After that, it was jarring how crazy the story got and it had me reeling, but in a good way!
The farther into the book you go, the more you get to see of the dream world—the place where the Sandman lives and where Nora goes when she falls asleep. That’s when this book really grabbed me. A whole other world was slowly exposed to us bit by bit and it was so fun to read about! With dreams being the basis of this universe, literally anything is possible and it was cool seeing what Duell did with that.
It all leads to one crazy ass ending and I’m SO CURIOUS to see where book two goes!! Everything we see in the second half is really what made me fall for this story and I can’t wait to see what role the characters will play and what will happen. I’m bursting to say more, but I feel like I’ll give it away!!
I will say that I just wasn’t that into the romance aspect of this book? It’s hard to put my finger on why because I really liked both the main characters. But their relationship is already pretty well established at the start of the story, so when they finally confessed their feelings there was no real pay off or gratification. I kind of just wanted them to get on with it so I could find out what happened.
↬ FINAL WORD
I am soooo here for the dark vibes of this book and now I can’t wait to see what happens in the next installment!
Solid 3.5 star
This was a great read, I liked the characters, you could feel the torment the Sandman had for what he had done to Nora 5 years early as well as the need to need to keep the balance of Light and Dark. Nora lives a life of lies pretending she no longer believes in the Sandman and he was just her coping mechanism when her parents divorced. Now Weaver who rules the nightmares wants what Sandman gave Nora 5 year ago and will stop at nothing to get it including forcing someones worst nightmare onto them sending them crazy and the ending was a great twist. There is plenty of terror and hope in this book I just wish we had more background in regards to Sandman, Weaver and their world so you could connect more with that side of things, hopefully the next books builds that world up for us.
This was such an engaging and entertaining foray into the dream and nightmare-scape.
Such imagination was expanded here and I was ever so fascinated by the Sandman himself.
If I’m being honest here he was hands down my favourite character in Dream Keeper by far: and the best thing overall about this story.
I really would have liked to have dug deeper into his backstory than we actually did: hopefully, his particular tale will emerge gradually in future instalments.
So In itself, as a story, the prose used throughout Dreamkeeper had such a lyrical feel to it.
Also though YA, this actually had a much darker vibe to it than I was originally expecting.
This is not an actual criticism just an observation: I myself prefer it when there are shades of grey involved: makes things a tad meatier.
So I found this a bit light on developed secondary characters and also it did get slightly repetitive at times in regard to Nora’s nighttime wanderings.
I also disliked that we never got a name for the Sandman: It left me feeling slightly disconnected to him as an individual and as an extension a romantic interest.
I also found it a tad disconcerting that certain pivotal players were introduced so late in the game without any prior mentions.
Despite this, I still enjoyed myself with this it’s an extremely imaginative story.
I also liked where this eventually took us and originally I was not sure if I was gonna read the next.
instalment of this as I wasn’t really that invested overall but with that finale how could I not: I so gotta see where this is heading to next.
So on that note folks: I will love ya and leave ya.
I voluntary reviewed an Arc of Dream Keeper (The Dark Dreamer Trilogy, #1).
All opinions expressed are entirely my own.
Reviewed By Beckie Bookworm
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