Review of The Vault of Dreamers by Caragh M O'Brien

Review of Caragh M O'Brien's The Vault of Dreamers

Release Date: September 16th, 2014

Synopsis as found on GoodReads.com:

From the author of the Birthmarked trilogy comes a fast-paced, psychologically thrilling novel about what happens when your dreams are not your own.

The Forge School is the most prestigious arts school in the country. The secret to its success:  every moment of the students' lives is televised as part of the insanely popular Forge Show, and the students' schedule includes twelve hours of induced sleep meant to enhance creativity. But when first year student Rosie Sinclair skips her sleeping pill, she discovers there is something off about Forge. In fact, she suspects that there are sinister things going on deep below the reaches of the cameras in the school. What's worse is, she starts to notice that the edges of her consciousness do not feel quite right. And soon, she unearths the ghastly secret that the Forge School is hiding—and what it truly means to dream there.

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From the author of 1 of my favorite series, Birthmarked, comes this book about a girl who is accepted into an elite school that is also a reality show. Rosie is 1 of 100 new Sophmores that were accepted at The Forge School for the arts. With thousands of applications every year, the outcome could have been very different. Rosie comes from a poor town where she lives in an abandoned train car with her family. She does not want to end up back there, but out of the 100 students, only 50 get to stay. The 50 are chosen by a popularity ranking system called the Blip Board. Sadly Rosie is close to last place.

The book begins with only 1 day before the choices are made with who can stay & who gets sent home. Rosie has to quickly make a plan on how she is going to gain popularity that quickly. It has been done in the shows past, but can she accomplish the unimaginable? That is when she meets Linus, a lowly kitchen employee only a year older than her. For her time already being at Forge, she hasn't made a single friend, because she wanted to focus on her art, but now is when she begins to open her eyes to the people and world around her.

At the same time, Rosie begins to see little things that make her question the school she is living at. Every day they are made to take 12 hours of sleep with the help of sleeping pills, but one night Rosie decides to gum hers and remove it when the night monitor leaves. She sees another girl have a seizure in the middle of the night & an IV placed into her arm. Afterword, they roll the girl out of the room. The next morning, the girl doesn't even realize anything has happened & doesn't notice the scab in her arm.

This story is about Rosie's life in a school that is a reality show... but this school is not exactly what it's viewers believe it is. It was a fast paced mystery that had me second guessing if the character was crazy or if everyone was making her feel that way. I enjoyed it quite a bit. If it can't be dystopian, at least it involved a competition/reality show a la The Selection by Kiera Cass.

This book marks the end of my tangent in reading only already released books. So I will be back to reading 3 Advance Copies & then 3 Released books as usual. So make sure you are checking back in a few days to see what I've read next.