Liar meets Romeo and Juliet in this Shakespeare-inspired young adult novel about trusting yourself when everyone is telling you your instincts are wrong.
Jaye wakes up in the hospital, disoriented and beset by a slippery morphing of reality into something else. She repeatedly sees a boy who she feels like she knows—but that’s impossible. Determined to get back to school and back to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which she’s starring, she lies to her sister, her mom, and her doctors—she’s fine, she says. She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine. But then on her first day back, she takes a seat in class next to the mysterious boy. Queasy with anxiety (“I can’t see you,” she hisses at him, “because you’re not really here”), Jaye realizes this boy is, in fact, real. And he has no idea what she’s talking about.
Caught between this fascinating, empathetic new kid and her childhood friend turned recent love interest, Jaye begins to notice unnerving similarities between her circumstances and those of some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. Tingling banter and clandestine meet-ups give way to darker, muddier incidents. As things escalate to a frightening pitch, how much of what’s happening is real, how much is in Jaye’s head, and how much does it matter as she’s hurtling toward a fateful end over which she seems to have no control?
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“West brings her trademark poetic and hauntingly enchanting writing style to her newest book, Dreamers Often Lie…an especially compelling read for those who enjoy theater, Shakespeare, and school theater productions.”
— TeenReads.com
“If you liked the trippy hallucinations of Black Swan, you’ll be mesmerized by Jacqueline West’s eerie new YA romance Dreamers Often Lie.”
— Entertainment Weekly“Dreamers Often Lie also uses unusual sources of depth, conveyed in rich language…Many teens—especially theater types—will find this story resonant.”
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune“In a book peppered with Shakespeare’s characters and imbued with his language, Jaye is a fiercely headstrong force and West’s writing is lyrical and opulent.”
— Booklist“This novel has many questions and few answers, which is true to the Shakespearean influence and makes for a unique reading experience.”
— School Library Journal“Engrossing…A dizzying new twist on one of the Bard’s most famous plays.”
— Kirkus ReviewsBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Jacqueline West, a two-time Pushcart nominee for poetry, is also the author of the kid- and critic-beloved middle-grade Books of Elsewhere series. Jacqueline lives amid the bluffs of Red Wing, Minnesota, with her husband, son, and their dog, Brom Bones.
Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.