Unraveled and Unimpressed: The Empty Mystery of ‘In My Dreams I Hold a Knife’

“« Mutantur nos et vos, corpus et animam mean. »
« We will change you, body and soul. »”

Choosing to put In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead on the sidelines turns out to be the right call.

The East House Seven is down to six. One of them is found murdered in her dorm room.

Caught between past and present, the story slowly unravels as each character reveals their secrets. Each one ruining them. Breaking them to pieces. Shattering themselves like glass. But none of it answers the question: Who killed Heather?

The biggest deciding factor in finally reading this book was seeing it categorized as Dark Academia on Goodreads. Having read The Secret History, it's hard not to want more from the genre. That book leaves you wanting. But here, the only thing holding it together is the mood and atmosphere.

Writing wise, it is accessible and easy to read, but at some point it starts to feel like even the person who edited the book got confused. The timeline is messy, and the characters feel so similar it’s as if there’s only one person in the story. What separates them is just their buying power. Beyond that, their personalities, desires, and drives are nearly identical.

As someone who likes their books to be character driven, this is a struggle. It is a pain being in the head of the main character. She is insufferable and annoying, both in the past and the present. Maybe especially in the present, because she is so hung up on her past that she can’t move forward. And the irony is that she says something similar to one of the other characters.

It is easy to consider DNF-ing this book, but luckily, the desire to know the answer to the mystery is stronger. Also, despite being tagged as adult fiction, the writing feels so young adult that it is not much trouble to speedread.

In its entirety, the book is rather disappointing. The characters are boring and bone-deep annoying, and there is no saving the number of times I read about Jessica M's past and could not tell what was happening to her. In her dreams, she definitely held a knife. She used it to hold hostage whoever picked up this book and made them finish.