First of all, I'd like to thank Netgalley and September Publishing for sending me this book to review. Unfortunately, I had to DNF. I tried for a week to get into the book but I struggled to get through it (my slight reading slump certainly didn't help). The concept certainly interested me but I've decided that it's not for me. It took 8 chapters for anything to truly happen and I'm more of a fast-paced book type of person. The beginning was really long, slow and full of descriptions I wasn't following (though I was fascinated by it being set in the afterlife) and once things kicked off I was confused. I struggled to get a clear image of who was related to who and how and I felt like the scene where the family is being "attacked" by paparazzi was a little dramatic. This might just be me, but I didn't understand why they didn't call the authorities. Surely, they would've answered that call. Unfortunately, I didn't get past that scene.
Of course, these are all my opinions and I can definitely see there being an audience for the book, but I wouldn't consider myself apart of it.
Once again thank you to Netgalley and September Publishing.

I chose this from Manda Scott as I had loved A Treachery of Spies, this is rather different and fascinating, elements of which will be familiar to readers who have come across the writings of the likes of Carlos Castaneda. She threads myths, legends, stories, and speculates of political and radical change in the future. I both read and listened to this on audio, approximately 19 hours and 20 minutes long, ably narrated by Clare Corbett who kept my attention firmly on the unfolding storytelling and the ancient wisdom, power, dreams, hope and light it contains, particularly given our troubled contemporary world.

It all begins with the impending death of 66 year old Alanna 'Lan' Penhalighon from cancer, with her is the young distraught Finn and she can see at least one crow. There is nothing Lan can do to prevent dying, but she does not want to leave him without hope, her relationship with Finn so strong, partly due to their long history of seriously playing video war games with him as she was raising him. Lan is an unusual woman, who has developed her open minded family's practice of 'lucid dreaming', dreaming with deliberate intent, which she herself had learnt from Uuri. Lan is going to be desperately needed down the line.

We follow a path to the future, a future with obstacles coming from establishment sources. I am not sure this will be a read for everyone, but I do think it will appeal to dreamers, readers looking for something different, those weary and fearful of the state of our world today, as there is a thought provoking possibility of positivity and inspiration provided by Scott here. Many thanks to the publisher and Bolinda Audio for an ALC.

I had a hard time connecting to this book, and am DNFing it at 10%. The writing style isn't for me, and I'm not invested in any of the characters. The formatting on Kindle isn't great and made it even harder to get into.

I found this book really difficult to engage with. The writing style was not to my liking and I gave up within 100 pages.