THE GIRL IN MY DREAMS

In Olivier’s sweeping SF romance, an intense love affair between a man and a woman leads to the revelation of decades-old secrets.

When rock star Oliver Lawrence meets the unpredictable Nina Harrison at his regular London nightclub, it’s love at first sight. However, their first official encounter ends in a near-fatal car accident, and both wind up in the hospital. Oliver, while recovering from a broken back, begins having vivid, disturbing dreams about Nina, who remains comatose with a failing heart. As he tries to piece together his memories of the crash, he falls more deeply in love—and when she finally wakes up, they find that the feeling is mutual. However, things are more complicated than they first appear. In his dreams, Nina appears as a yellow-eyed succubus who dances in blood and begs Oliver to stay with her—and even in real life, she’s anarchic. Now Oliver, confined to a wheelchair, wants to hold on to the bliss they’ve found together, despite their changing lives, and Nina wants to dig deeper into what’s happening to them after discovering that they’re both having the same dreams. They gradually inch closer to the mystery of their linked minds and to what really happened that fateful night of the crash. Author Olivier presents a truly unusual story that tugs at the heartstrings and boggles the mind in equal measure. Despite the serious circumstances that the characters face, their romance feels oddly light and playful in its melodrama, like teenagers having a first crush; when Olivier writes, “Nina was categorically linked to my heart,” it feels effortless. The novel also slips into science fiction, with “neurological linking” and an unexpected villain. A late tonal shift is very sharp, making the narrative suddenly feel more like a high-stakes thriller rather than a slow-burning mystery, but the momentum steadily builds, resulting in a satisfying read.

Love is the drug and sacrifice is the antidote in this thrilling mystery of destiny and desire.