Review: Well Done
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 5, 2013
Diana's Dreams is a very different sort of book, it was definitely different than the books I've been reading lately.  When I read the description of vampires, wizards and werewolves I was a little afraid I'd stepped into another Twilight remake, but I was proven wrong almost right from the word go.You won't find the "impossibly special impossibly beautiful" characters here.  You find a down-to-earth family, with a husband who just happens to be a werewolf after being bitten.  They're a family with financial struggles, run-of-the-mill kids, and trials in their marriage that so many couples face.Diana, the main character, deals with her stress by flirting with people, and while her and her husband reconcile, she doesn't realize the danger she put herself into when the person she had innocently flirted with suddenly kidnaps and tortures her.I wondered at first if this was going to be an instance of Stockholm Syndrome or something, or her falling for her captor, but I found it quite the opposite, which I found very realistic.  She feigns interest in him to ease her suffering and protect her family as much as possible while leading her husband to her rescue.I don't want to give away the whole plot, but I will say that it's rough.  There are moments that brought me right back to Stephen King's Misery, and it was a little gut-wrenching.  But it was handled well, and there's massive props for that.  The story isn't some fluffy love-ballad and Coffman should be commended for that.  It's a tough genre to take on, and she handled it well.I have a few critiques, nothing that should detract anyone from buying this book, especially if supernatural horror is your cup of tea.  Trust me.First, I found the beginning a little rough.  It was tough to get into, the prose felt a bit stilted in the beginning, and there were some tense shifts all through the book which threw me off just a little.  The POV also changes from Diana's first POV to third POV to tell the second part of the story, and I wonder if it might have been better told if the entire book were third person.  I think it would have been nice to have an unrestricted viewpoint of Diana's situation while she was with Mark.Also I noticed a few formatting issues that threw me off a little.  There were no scene-break indicators so I wasn't sure if I was going into a new chapter or new section until the POV shifted, and that was a little tough for me.  I'm sure in the paperback it makes more sense, but I had the version on my PC so I can't make a judgment call either way.Again, none of those should detract anyone from buying the book, and it's certainly not enough to mark the book down stars.  It holds, in my opinion, a sold four stars, and that's from someone who doesn't ever do the horror genre.  So I say well done and I'm definitely interested in checking out more of Coffman's work!