In Dreams Begin - Skyler White

So a while back I was sent a book called In Dreams Begin by Skyler White for review. I had read her first novel and falling, fly and was very excited to read her second.

Skyler writes books that make you think. Not that do the thinking for you. And I totally dig that. Makes you wonder if the things she's writing about are actually possible in the real world. So I was totally excited to receive her second book in the mail.

In Dreams Begin is a book unlike any other I've ever read. Modern girl, just married, being transported over a century BACKWARDS when she falls asleep. And the kicker is... when she arrives in the past, she takes over the body of an Irish freedom fighter named Maude Gonne, and falls in love with poet W.B. Yeats. And he with her.

Great story. There were a few parts where I had to go back and read a few paragraphs again to figure out what exactly I was reading. Who was who and where were they. It kind of moved around a bit quickly so there were times when it lost me. But her writing is smooth. Melodious. If that makes sense. She doesn't try to be hip and with it. She doesn't use vulgarity and slang in an effort to draw in a particular group of readers. It's as if she's writing solely for the characters int he story. It's poetic. And Elegant.

Description of back of the book from Goodreads.com

"“Close your eyes tightly—tightly—and keep them closed . . .”

From a Victorian Ireland of magic, poetry and rebellion, Ida Jameson, an amateur occultist, reaches out for power, but captures Laura Armstrong, a modern-day graphic artist instead. Now, for the man or demon she loves, each woman must span a bridge through Hell and across history . . . or destroy it.

“Every passionate man is linked with another age, historical or imaginary, where alone he finds images that rouse his energy.” W. B. Yeats

Anchored in fact on both sides of history, Laura and Ida, modern rationalist and fin de siècle occultist, are linked from the moment Ida channels Laura into the body of celebrated beauty and Irish freedom-fighter Maud Gonne. When Laura falls—from an ocean and a hundred years away—passionately, Victorianly in love with the young poet W. B. Yeats, their love affair entwines with Irish history and weaves through Yeats’s poetry until Ida discovers something she wants more than magic in the subterranean spaces in between.

With her Irish past threatening her orderly present and the man she loves in it, Laura and Yeats—the practical materialist and the poet magus—must find a way to make love last over time, in changing bodies, through modern damnation, and into the mythic past to link their pilgrim souls . . . or lose them forever."

I strongly recommend this book to anyone looking for a refreshing new read.